Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/202

186 only by removing the influence on him of this mind, by

emptying his thought of the false stimulus and reaction of will-power and filling it with the divine energies of Truth.

Christian Science destroys material beliefs through the understanding of Spirit, and the thoroughness of this work determines health. Erring human mind-forces can work only evil under whatever name or pretence they are employed; for Spirit and matter, good and evil, light and darkness, cannot mingle.

Evil is a negation, because it is the absence of truth. It is nothing, because it is the absence of something. It

is unreal, because it presupposes the absence of God, the omnipotent and omnipresent. Every mortal must learn that there is neither power nor reality in evil.

Evil is self-assertive. It says: “I am a real entity, over-mastering good.” This falsehood should strip evil of all pretensions. The only power of evil is to destroy itself. It can never destroy one iota of good. Every attempt of evil to destroy good is a failure, and only aids in peremptorily punishing the evil-doer. If we concede the same reality to discord as to harmony, discord has as lasting a claim upon us as has harmony. If evil is as real as good, evil is also as immortal. If death is as real as Life, immortality is a myth. If pain is as real as the absence of pain, both must be immortal; and if so, harmony cannot be the law of being.

Mortal mind is ignorant of self, or it could never be self-deceived. If mortal mind knew how to be better, it

would be better. Since it must believe in something besides itself, it enthrones matter as deity. The human mind has been an idolater from the beginning,