Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/271

Rh Mrs. Eddy says:

The origin of evil is the problem of ages. It confronts each generation anew. It confronts Christian Science. The question is often asked, if God created only the good, whence comes the evil?

To this question Christian Science replies: Evil never did exist as an entity. It is but a belief that there is an opposite Intelligence to God. This belief is a species of idolatry, and is not more true or real than that an image graven on wood or stone is God.

But concerning the origin of the belief in evil, Mrs. Eddy is silent; and certainly with the belief we are immediately concerned, since that and that alone "brought death into the world, and all our woe." The cause of this knot or tangle in the human consciousness, however, remains unexplained down to the very last page of the very last edition of Science and Health.

The Rev. James Henry Wiggin, for some years Mrs. Eddy's literary adviser, said that "Mesmerism was her Devil," and it does seem that she has routed Satan from pillar to post only to be confronted by him at last. By designating evil as Mortal Mind, and declaring that it was non-existent, Mrs. Eddy evidently believed herself well rid of it; and she was bewildered to find that she was still afraid of it, and that it could do her harm. Unwittingly she was demonstrating Kant's proposition that "a dream which we all dream together, and which we all must dream, is not a dream, but a reality."

Mrs. Eddy's method of protecting herself against Malicious Mesmerism—the "adverse treatment" which later became such a prolific source of scandal in the Christian Science Church—was first practised by her students about 1875. By now mesmerism had become an indispensable household convenience.