“Evil is not power”

An article in the October Arena has unwittingly exploited the supposed power of evil, so-called, and has conceded to this self-asserted and self-asserting phenomenon of mortal mind a place in human experience which it could not occupy without dethroning God, good, and robbing Him of His place as the one supreme infinite Mind who governs and guides the universe according to His will and pleasure, which will and pleasure must of necessity be in accord with His own divine nature.

The belief of power in evil is a belief in the power to harm yourself and to harm others, to lie, to steal, to murder, to break all the commandments of God. That this belief should prevail is possible only because the truth of being is not clearly understood. That it is a mistaken belief is easily seen from its own contradictory character. Jesus said, “A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit;” and if we start with the admitted fact that God is omnipotent, that He is infinite good, we can never admit that there is a power opposed to Him and to His nature. That evil is real or has power is an unthinkable proposition unless we absolutely deny the infinitude of God, good. No form of evil can do the work of Truth, or have power or entity; evil can do nothing but destroy itself. If evil with its train of sin, sickness, and death could have power, God, good would be dethroned—would not be omnipotent. Such a proposition must be rejected by every Christian, by every monotheist. Evil is no more real, because it seems to be real, than a wicked or painful dream in sleep is real.

But the individual who attempts mentally or physically to produce the belief of sin, disease, or death, is guilty of the attempt to commit a murder, and Mrs. Eddy says scientifically and prophetically that at no distant day the mental assassin will be punished legally as certainly as the man or woman who sends a bullet into a man’s heart. To-day even the mental assassin is punished morally, for no one can desire to commit murder without incurring the penalty named in the Scripture, “Ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him;” in other words, that the criminal can experience no harmony unless he repents and reforms. In Divine Science Life is God, and God is infinite, all; but to the personal senses the belief of death is as real as the fact of life, hence the belief that says, “I can kill a man mentally and not suffer for it,” may be father to the thought of committing the crime of trying to kill a man, since as a man “thinketh in his heart, so is he.”