Individuals who are beginning the study of Christian Science not infrequently find difficulty in reconciling the presence of sin and evil in the world with the creation of a perfect man and a perfect universe by an infinitely good God, and they generally want to be informed as to where and how evil originated and how the originally perfect man fell from his state of created perfection. Coupled with this is the further question, If God is infinitely good, how could He, or why did He, create a man capable of sinning?

These questions are not particularly novel, for they are precisely those which confronted the early Christian church and resulted in the Gnostic controversy of the first three centuries. They are wholly due to an illogical point of view, to the putting of an effect before a cause, or to the supposition that because a thing seems to exist it must of necessity have had a cause. During all the ages humanity has pursued this course, and modern education seems to be largely predicated upon it, with the result that one of the chief difficulties with which Christian Science has to contend is the establishment of a correct view-point.

Philosophers and investigators in the realm of causation have generally begun their reasoning with the admission of the existence of what they have termed a series of well-established and incontrovertible facts, and from these they have reasoned backward in the endeavor to find a cause which might satisfactorily account for them. The flaw in this type of reasoning is that the starting-point is fallacious, and consequently every subsequent step must be equally at fault. All such reasoning has been based upon the alleged reality of material phenomena, a predication no longer admitted by competent thinkers and no longer taught in the higher schools of education.

To one suffering from an illusion the specter is apparently without material tangibility, though it seems to be visible, and it is obvious that should an investigator endeavor to reason back from the seeming reality of the illusion in his search for an adequate cause, he is doomed to failure, since there can be no cause for an effect which has no real existence. Attempts to account for material phenomena on any such basis will always end just where the Gnostic investigators ended,—in confusion.

When Mrs. Eddy perceived the unsoundness of such reasoning, she made no effort to compromise with it, but with keen perception built on the inspired teaching of Christ Jesus, utterly abandoned the mis-logic of the effect-to-cause process, and replaced it with the proposition that an infinitely good cause can by no possibility produce anything other than an effect of like character. She saw that if God made man perfect, then man must inevitably remain perfect, and so does remain, despite the material evidence which seems to controvert this inference.

Accepting the Scripture declaration that "God is one," the only cause and the only creator, Mrs. Eddy reached the logical conclusion that "there can be no effect from any other cause, and there can be no reality in aught which does not proceed from this great and only cause" (Science and Health, p. 207). Summed up, the situation from her point of view is simply that if there are two apparently irreconcilable situations, one must be dispensed with so far as its recognition as actuality is concerned, and it remains to decide which of the two is to be discarded. Either the infinitely good cause or the finitely evil effect must go, and it is her instant decision upon this point that has placed her name so far in advance of the materialistic truth seekers of all ages. She elected to retain the infinite good and to dispense with the phenomena which seemed to controvert its infinity and goodness, and from this decision came the wonderfully clear-cut statement on page 468 of Science and Health denominated "the scientific statement of being," which in the last forty years has earned the unqualified endorsement of logical thinkers of all schools.

Philosophical reasoning on the assumption of the reality and indestructibility of matter is generally inductive, while reasoning from a known and established cause to a characteristic effect is deductive, and it is this radical difference in the points of view that occasions difficulty in the mind of the student, or those unacquainted with the teachings of Christian Science. Material philosophy says, Here is an effect, and consequently there must have been a cause for it; Christian Science says, There is but one cause, and any effect which is unlike that cause has no real existence.

It has been argued by beginners in the study of Christian Science that there must be a starting-point from which to begin one's reasoning, and this starting-point can only be obtained from observation of the things about one, the phenomena perceived. This situation is not unlike that referred to by St. Paul in his first epistle to the Corinthians, when he said, "For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness."

Christian Science starts with God, good, as the first and only cause, and insists that this is the basic fact on which to ground all deductive reasoning. It recognizes that a cause which is wholly good must be eternal, and vice versa. Had it the capacity to cognize evil, which would be necessary if any of its effects should manifest evil, it would then contain within itself the quality which would compass its own destruction and so destroy its eternality; thus converting itself from a cause into an effect, a wholly unthinkable and absurd position.

This Science further insists that the effect of a wholly good cause must be exactly like itself in quality, that is, wholly good, entirely devoid of evil or the capacity to manifest evil. It insists that these effects, or objects of creation, have remained wholly good, and do so remain today because they can never possess any other quality than that bestowed upon them by their creator, and it also declares that as there never was any other cause than one wholly good cause, no evil or sinful effect can be implanted in the effects of that cause, or the creation. It thus at once resolves all evil, sin, disease, and death, which seem to have established themselves in the universe, into exactly what clear logic insists they have always been and forever must be, namely, unrealities.

Logical deduction continues to affirm that if man was ever created perfect, he so remains today; that a sinning, suffering, imperfect mortal is an illusion and nothing more, and that in the proportion to which thought is held steadfastly to the concept of perfect man in the image and likeness (or character) of a perfect cause, so will the illusion disappear, be it sin, disease, or death. In other words, if the true view-point is attained, the reasoning from that point will be correct, and thus correct any illusion growing out of illogical reasoning.