Try this process, dear inquirer, and so reach that perfect Love which "casteth out fear," and then see if this Love does not destroy in you all hate and the sense of evil. You will awake to the perception of G.o.d as All-in-all. You will find yourself losing the knowledge and the operation of sin, proportionably as you realize the divine infinitude and believe that He can see nothing outside of His own focal distance.

A Colloquy

In Romans (ii. 15) we read the apostle's description of mental processes wherein human thoughts are "the mean while accusing or else excusing one another." If we observe our mental processes, we shall find that we are perpetually arguing with ourselves; yet each mortal is not two personalities, but one.

In like manner good and evil talk to one another; yet they are not two but one, for evil is naught, and good only is reality.

_Evil._ G.o.d hath said, "Ye shall eat of every tree of the garden." If you do not, your intellect will be circ.u.mscribed and the evidence of your personal senses be denied. This would antagonize individual consciousness and existence.

_Good._ The Lord is G.o.d. With Him is no consciousness of evil, because there is nothing beside Him or outside of Him. Individual consciousness in man is inseparable from good. There is no sensible matter, no sense in matter; but there is a spiritual sense, a sense of Spirit, and this is the only consciousness belonging to true individuality, or a divine sense of being.

_Evil._ Why is this so?

_Good._ Because man is made after G.o.d's eternal likeness, and this likeness consists in a sense of harmony and immortality, in which no evil can possibly dwell. You may eat of the fruit of G.o.dlikeness, but as to the fruit of unG.o.dliness, which is opposed to Truth,--ye shall not touch it, lest ye die.

_Evil._ But I would taste and know error for myself.

_Good._ Thou shalt not admit that error is something to know or be known, to eat or be eaten, to see or be seen, to feel or be felt. To admit the existence of error would be to admit the truth of a lie.

_Evil._ But there is something besides good. G.o.d knows that a knowledge of this something is essential to happiness and life. A lie is as genuine as Truth, though not so legitimate a child of G.o.d. Whatever exists must come from G.o.d, and be important to our knowledge. Error, even, is His offspring.

_Good._ Whatever cometh not from the eternal Spirit, has its origin in the physical senses and material brains, called _human intellect_ and _will-power_,--_alias_ intelligent matter.

In Shakespeare's tragedy of King Lear, it was the traitorous and cruel treatment received by old Gloster from his b.a.s.t.a.r.d son Edmund which makes true the lines:

The G.o.ds are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to scourge us.

His lawful son, Edgar, was to his father ever loyal. Now G.o.d has no b.a.s.t.a.r.ds to turn again and rend their Maker. The divine children are born of law and order, and Truth knows only such.

How well the Shakespearean tale agrees with the word of Scripture, in Hebrews xii. 7, 8: "If ye endure chastening, G.o.d dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastis.e.m.e.nt, whereof all are partakers, then are ye b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, and not sons."

The doubtful or spurious evidence of the senses is not to be admitted,--especially when they testify concerning Spirit, whereof they are confessedly incompetent to speak.

_Evil._ But mortal mind and sin really exist!

_Good._ How can they exist, unless G.o.d has created them? And how can He create anything so wholly unlike Himself and foreign to His nature? An evil material mind, so-called, can conceive of G.o.d only as like itself, and knowing both evil and good; but a purely good and spiritual consciousness has no sense whereby to cognize evil. Mortal mind is the opposite of immortal Mind, and sin the opposite of goodness. I am the infinite All.

From me proceedeth all Mind, all consciousness, all individuality, all being. My Mind is divine good, and cannot drift into evil. To believe in minds many is to depart from the supreme sense of harmony. Your a.s.sumptions insist that there is more than the one Mind, more than the one G.o.d; but verily I say unto you, G.o.d is All-in-all; and you can never be outside of His oneness.

_Evil._ I am a finite consciousness, a material individuality,--a mind in matter, which is both evil and good.

_Good._ All consciousness is Mind; and Mind is G.o.d,--an infinite, and not a finite consciousness. This consciousness is reflected in individual consciousness, or man, whose source is infinite Mind. There is no really finite mind, no finite consciousness. There is no material substance, for Spirit is all that endureth, and hence is the only substance. There is, can be, no evil mind, because Mind is G.o.d. G.o.d and His ideas--that is, G.o.d and the universe--const.i.tute all that exists. Man, as G.o.d's offspring, must be spiritual, perfect, eternal.

_Evil._ I am something separate from good or G.o.d. I am substance. My mind is more than matter. In my mortal mind, matter becomes conscious, and is able to see, taste, hear, feel, smell. Whatever matter thus affirms is mainly correct. If you, O good, deny this, then I deny your truthfulness.

If you say that matter is unconscious, you stultify my intellect, insult my conscience, and dispute self-evident facts; for nothing can be clearer than the testimony of the five senses.

_Good._ Spirit is the only substance. Spirit is G.o.d, and G.o.d is good; hence good is the only substance, the only Mind. Mind is not, cannot be, in matter. It sees, hears, feels, tastes, smells as Mind, and not as matter.

Matter cannot talk; and hence, whatever it appears to say of itself is a lie. This lie, that Mind can be in matter,--claiming to be something beside G.o.d, denying Truth and its demonstration in Christian Science,--this lie I declare an illusion. This denial enlarges the human intellect by removing its evidence from sense to Soul, and from finiteness into infinity. It honors conscious human individuality by showing G.o.d as its source.

_Evil._ I am a creator,--but upon a material, not a spiritual basis. I give life, and I can destroy life.

_Good._ Evil is not a creator. G.o.d, good, is the only creator. Evil is not conscious or conscientious Mind; it is not individual, not actual. Evil is not spiritual, and therefore has no groundwork in Life, whose only source is Spirit. The elements which belong to the eternal All,--Life, Truth, Love,--evil can never take away.

_Evil._ I am intelligent matter; and matter is egoistic, having its own innate selfhood and the capacity to evolve mind. G.o.d is in matter, and matter reproduces G.o.d. From Him come my forms, near or remote. This is my honor, that G.o.d is my author, authority, governor, disposer. I am proud to be in His outstretched hands, and I shirk all responsibility for myself as evil, and for my varying manifestations.

_Good._ You mistake, O evil! G.o.d is not your authority and law. Neither is He the author of the material changes, the _phantasma_, a belief in which leads to such teaching as we find in the hymn-verse so often sung in church:--

Chance and change are busy ever, Man decays and ages move; But His mercy waneth never,-- G.o.d is wisdom, G.o.d is love.

Now if it be true that G.o.d's power _never waneth_, how can it be also true that _chance_ and _change_ are universal factors,--that _man decays_? Many ordinary Christians protest against this stanza of Bowring's, and its sentiment is foreign to Christian Science. If G.o.d be _changeless goodness_, as sings another line of this hymn, what place has _chance_ in the divine economy? Nay, there is in G.o.d naught fantastic. All is real, all is serious. The phantasmagoria is a product of human dreams.

The Ego

From various friends comes inquiry as to the meaning of a word employed in the foregoing colloquy.

There are two English words, often used as if they were synonyms, which really have a shade of difference between them.

An _egotist_ is one who talks much of himself. _Egotism_ implies vanity and self-conceit.

_Egoism_ is a more philosophical word, signifying a pa.s.sionate love of self, which doubts all existence except its own. An _egoist_, therefore, is one uncertain of everything except his own existence.

Applying these distinctions to evil and G.o.d, we shall find that evil is _egotistic_,--boastful, but fleeing like a shadow at daybreak; while G.o.d is _egoistic_, knowing only His own all-presence, all-knowledge, all-power.

Soul

We read in the Hebrew Scriptures, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die."

What is Soul? Is it a reality within the mortal body? Who can prove that?

Anatomy has not descried nor described Soul. It was never touched by the scalpel nor cut with the dissecting-knife. The five physical senses do not cognize it.

Who, then, dares define Soul as something within man? As well might you declare some old castle to be peopled with demons or angels, though never a light or form was discerned therein, and not a spectre had ever been seen going in or coming out.

The common hypotheses about souls are even more vague than ordinary material conjectures, and have less basis; because material theories are built on the evidence of the material senses.

Soul must be G.o.d; since we learn Soul only as we learn G.o.d, by spiritualization. As the five senses take no cognizance of Soul, so they take no cognizance of G.o.d. Whatever cannot be taken in by mortal mind--by human reflection, reason, or belief--must be the unfathomable Mind, which "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard." Soul stands in this relation to every hypothesis as to its human character.

If Soul sins, it is a sinner, and Jewish law condemned the sinner to death,--as does all criminal law, to a certain extent.