Every moment presents to human consciousness a picture of good and evil. Sometimes the good appears to predominate, and at other times evil seems to govern. When evil predominates we say we have a problem, and we take steps to overcome the evil. Christian Science shows us the one basis for solving the problem. It is the fact that God is good, the All-in-all. Evil is not real.

When I was a very small boy, my father smoked a pipe. But he began, with my mother, to study the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy. In this study he learned something of God as infinite Principle, the one and only Spirit. But there seemed to be another spirit that told him he loved his pipe and would not give it up. One day he went to work forgetting to take his pipe—something he had never done before. He did not think of it until he came home that night and found it resting on the table.

Thinking to enjoy a smoke he proceeded to light the pipe only to discover that it tasted awful. His study of the truth in Christian Science had lifted his consciousness, purified it to a degree, and this gave him a new view of things. In this new view the taste of tobacco was an evil thing, and its claim to be attractive was obviously false. He never smoked again.

Evil does not always present itself in attractive forms. But it always claims to impress us in some way. Every case of discord or lack or disease involves an impression made upon human consciousness by some phase of evil. Until the evil is detected as evil, entirely separate from good, and until the evil is seen as nothing, the false impression continues to influence thought and to produce in human experience or on the body its inharmonious, limited, or painful effects.

As we begin to realize the truth that Mind is divine Principle and that man is Mind's idea, we begin to gain a higher standpoint. If someone seems hard to get along with, the application of the truth of God and man gives us spiritual discernment; and we begin to perceive that the uncertainties, the false motives, the thoughtlessness, the egotism, are impersonal errors. They are not attached to an individual but exist in carnal or mortal mind, which through these false traits presents itself to human consciousness for someone to accept and to react to as real.

With the truth of the one Mind, one Principle, the hold of this belief on our consciousness can be destroyed. As a result the evil disappears from our experience. Evil is unreal.

If we feel that the life we live is limited by the circumstances in which we find ourselves, we may face these circumstances, every one of them, and pray to view them from a higher standpoint. If limitation seems to have a real cause, that is, if it can be blamed on somebody or something, we are seeing the problem from a viewpoint that is too materialistic. The evidence of our condition is to that extent false.

On page 297 of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy writes: "Erroneous belief is destroyed by truth. Change the evidence, and that disappears which before seemed real to this false belief, and the human consciousness rises higher. Thus the reality of being is attained and man found to be immortal."

In reality the source of good never was a set of material circumstances or a human person working at a human job. The source of true income is the source of our being, the divine Principle, Love. Our talent for expressing the goodness of Life never began with, nor was it formed by, human heredity. It has its source in the Soul of our being, which is God.

Our capacity to contribute usefully and to find a productive, happy place in life never depends upon the conditions of mortal existence. It depends always upon timeless, infinite Spirit. We can face with the truth of being each claim that would limit us. We can apply to our thought of the claim the spiritual reality, including Spirit as perfect cause and man as perfect effect. Matter is no cause, and it has no effect. As a result of such a prayerful approach to the problem, limitations will be seen as evil and will disappear as the unreal always must.

If we seem to be ill, we may find the cause of the illness in the fear of evil or in our failure to recognize and to deal with the claim of evil or in our indulgence in evil. We need to gain a higher viewpoint wherein evil is seen for what it is. This comes in response to prayer that is honest enough to desire the full light of Truth.

The truth dawning on human thought, showing us that evil is not real and that good is real, is the ever-present Christ, the true idea, which Christ Jesus presented, of Life, Soul, Mind, God. And in Gennesaret, the people "brought unto him all that were diseased; and besought him that they might only touch the hem of his garment: and as many as touched were made perfectly whole" (Matt. 14:35,36).

Carl. J. Welz