Article August 22, 1983 Issue

"The accuser is not there"

EMILY LACEY

"Know your enemy" is a well-known dictum. In order to be free from the influence of the enemy, evil, it is helpful to discern how it claims to operate. In her Message to The Mother Church for 1901 Mrs. Eddy gives this statement on the nature of evil: "In the Greek devil is named serpent—liar—the god of this world; and St. Paul defines this world's god as dishonesty, craftiness, handling the word of God deceitfully. The original text defines devil as accuser, calumniator...."^{Message for 1901, p. 16.}

Studying Christian Science, we learn not only of God's ever-presence, but also of evil's consequent never-presence. Clearly, in divine Love's allness there can be no evil—neither accuser nor accused—for all is in accord with the nature of divine Love. Didn't the Revelator point to this great truth when he recorded, "The great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan"?^{Rev. 12:9.} In heaven, divine reality, there is no accuser present. Evil has no place in omnipresent good.

In our day-to-day lives, however, the accuser, alias mortal mind, may seem to be very much present. It claims to be our own thought. It accuses us of being the exact opposite of what we really are—God's eternal reflection. Christian Science helps us to see the accuser as an impersonal falsity and to cast it out of thought by knowing that it is no part of God and therefore no part of man's true being. One would never accuse God of being less than perfect; likewise, one should not accuse man, who is the emanation of God, of being less than Godlike. In this scientific realization the accuser is cast down for lack of identity or witness.

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