Christian Theism MARY BAKER EDDY          Scholastic theology elaborates the proposition that evil is a factor of good, and that to believe in the reality of evil is essential to a rounded sense of the existence of good.          This frail hypothesis is founded upon the basis of material and mortal evidence — only upon what the shifting mortal senses confirm and frail human reason accepts. The Science of Soul reverses this proposition, overturns the testimony of the five erring senses, and reveals in clearer divinity the existence of good only; that is, of God and His idea.          This postulate of divine Science only needs to be conceded, to afford opportunity for proof of its correctness and the clearer discernment of good.          Seek the Anglo-Saxon term for God, and you will find it to be good; then define good as God, and you will find that good is omnipotence, has all power; it fills all space, being omnipresent; hence, there is neither place nor power left for evil. Divest your thought, then, of the mortal and material view which contradicts the ever-presence and all-power of good; take in only the immortal facts which include these, and where will you see or feel evil, or find its existence necessary either to the origin or ultimate of good?          It is urged that, from his original state of perfection, man has fallen into the imperfection that requires evil through which to develop good. Were we to admit this vague proposition, the Science of man could never be learned; for in order to learn Science, we begin with the correct statement, with harmony and its Principle; and if man has lost his Principle and its harmony, from evidences before him he is incapable of knowing the facts of existence and its concomitants: therefore to him evil is as real and eternal as good, God! This awful deception is evil's umpire and empire, that good, God, understood, forcibly destroys.          What appears to mortals from their standpoint to be the necessity for evil, is proven by the law of opposites to be without necessity. Good is the primitive Principle of man; and evil, good's opposite, has no Principle, and is not, and cannot be, the derivative of good. Thus evil is neither a primitive nor a derivative, but is suppositional; in other words, a lie that is incapable of proof — therefore, wholly problematical.          The Science of Truth annihilates error, deprives evil of all power, and thereby destroys all error, sin, sickness, disease, and death. But the sinner is not sheltered from suffering from sin: he makes a great reality of evil, identifies himself with it, fancies he finds pleasure in it, and will reap what he sows; hence the sinner must endure the effects of his delusion until he awakes from it.   Excerpted from Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 13-15

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