Perhaps no statement of Christian Science is more farreaching or of greater import than that of Mary Baker Eddy's, on page 330 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," where she says, "Evil is nothing, no thing, mind, nor power." This profound and abstract statement may be seemingly more difficult to understand at this time when the world is apparently in the grasp of evil in the form of turmoil and strife of various types. An unprejudiced study of the Bible in the light which Christian Science throws upon it, however, will disclose the undeniable fact that God, good, is the only cause, intelligence, or power. Moreover, it will also be clearly seen that evil can have no place or presence in the all-inclusive kingdom of good.

That there was something apart from God, good, called evil, and that God knew it, was the claim of the serpentine talker as recorded in the third chapter of Genesis, and a further perusal of this book shows the self-imposed suffering brought upon mankind as the result of this erroneous belief. One need but turn through the pages of mortal history to find the unmistakable evidence of this certain but wholly avoidable punishment. The penalty imposed by this transgression will continue just so long as men believe in evil. For the knowledge of good, which is the only knowledge man can acquire, necessarily precludes the knowledge of anything unlike itself, and thus forever seals the doom of evil, confirming the Scriptural quotation, "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Since God, good, is self-existent and eternal, man in His image and likeness is immortal, and dies not; therefore, this passage of scripture must refer only to the suppositional sense of evil, which is the only thing that can die, or more accurately stated, pass away. Now if a knowledge of evil bears the fruits of death, God must not know evil, else He would Himself be extinguished. It is well for us that the divine Mind knows only good, for what Mind knows is real and forever established, and man is subjected only to Mind's eternal sway. Thus sin, sickness, and death cannot be the inevitable experience of all, and there is true hope for suffering humanity. As Mrs. Eddy says on page 3 of "Unity of Good": "God is All-in-all. Hence He is in Himself only, in His own nature and character, and is perfect being, or consciousness. He is all the Life and Mind there is or can be. Within Himself is every embodiment of Life and Mind."

There is, therefore, only one Mind and this Mind governs man in all his actions, words, and thoughts. This Mind imparts its own idea as its image and likeness, and since this Mind knows only that which is good, man can receive and in truth does receive only the impressions of good. It therefore very naturally follows that there can be no impressions of evil, and if no impressions, then no effects of evil. Since there can be no cause without its corresponding effect, and no effect without its procuring cause, then there can be no such thing as evil. Evil is an illusion, a lie, a negation, nothing, naught. Does the mathematician stand in awe of the character representing "naught"? Does the little child fear it, no matter how large or portentous one might make it? Can it add to or take from the sum total of any problem? Our answer must be, No. Neither can evil add to or take from the scientific solution of our human problems. It must remain forever "naught," having no power, possessing no entity, causing no effect. It is only necessary that we heed Mrs. Eddy's advice on page 108 of her "Miscellaneous Writings," where she says, "Not to know that a false claim is false, is to be in danger of believing it; hence the utility of knowing evil aright, then reducing its claim to its proper denominator,—nobody and nothing." Then it ceases to have even a semblance of power. There is but one true cause and one true effect, including all good as the present reality.

If we think, however, that evil is something which can influence us even in the slightest degree, it then seems real to us in exact proportion to our belief about it, just as the character "naught" would seem real to a child who had been erroneously taught that it stood for "something." If he believed it was more than "naught" and so used it in attempting to solve his problems, his answers would always be wrong. So it is with our human problems; whenever we consider evil as something or somebody we then make it appear real to us, and any conclusin arrived at from this basis can only be erroneous. It is therefore necessary that we deny the supposed existence of evil in all of its varied forms, or we are apt to be misled by its suppositional influence in our daily affairs. It is not necessary, however, for us to become vehement in our denial of evil in order to overcome it. Indeed, this is just what evil would have us do, for the more vehement our denial, the more real the claim of evil may seem to us. When a child once understands that the character "naught" stands for "nothing," it becomes unnecessary to further impress it upon him, for thereafter the moment he sees it he knows that it means "nothing" and that it cannot affect him or any of his conclusions in any manner whatsoever. We can effectually dispose of the claim of evil in all of its various phases by knowing the positive truth.

However, since we have been erroneously taught that evil is "something," possessing power and intelligence, it becomes necessary for us to meet and overcome this false claim more often than we would had we been correctly taught that it is "nothing;" and we overcome it by denial and affirmation, denying that which is untrue and affirming that which is true about any condition or circumstance. This brings us back to our starting point; namely, that there is but one First Cause, and this First Cause is good; hence all effect must be good, and any seeming effect which appears other than good is not of God, but is unreal, naught, nothing. Therefore it can exercise no more power than the "naught" in mathematics, nor can it ever become more than this. Since God, good, is All-in-all, evil is, always has been, and always will be nothing.