A Careful study of human nature reveals an inherent disposition to descant upon the subject of evil and a disinclination to magnify the good, although we find in the Bible many admonitions to the contrary. Whence this abnormality so prevalent in the moral and religious world of today? Is it a God-given tendency? Is God in any way responsible for it? Is there any law of His to validate or sustain it?
To those who were ready to hear the only logical answer to such queries Jesus said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." "He knew all men," and his mission on earth was to uplift human nature and show humanity how to "put off" all that was unlike good. He knew what constituted the mentality of mortals and he never once intimated that it was of God. He did say in unmistakable language that evil was a self-constituted lie and that it had no part in the truth of man's being; that the real man is "from above," while mortal mentality or consciousness is "from beneath." His teachings throughout very clearly define the line of demarcation between immortality and the belief of mortality. He did not try to make good and evil blend either in cause or effect. He effectually separated the wheat from the tares. He said plainly that evil thoughts originated in the heart or affections of mankind, and not in God. From these and other Scriptural statements Christian Science draws the logical conclusion that mortal mentality is "not of the Father, but is of the world;" that, as Paul says, "the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God;" that God imparts no element of materiality, evil, or mortality to His child, makes no law to uphold anything that is contrary to His own nature, and is in no way responsible for a supposititious mentality that is "enmity against God."
Turning for a moment to the prevalent religious opinions of the world, what do we find? First of all a stubborn determination to call evil good and to magnify it a thousandfold above the good,— to think evil, to look for it. to prophesy and expect, and even to demand that it shall come to pass in a hundred and one different forms. Then the inconsistent belief that an omniscient God must know and see evil in order to cope with it; that God is morally responsible for the existence of evil, and that it is His will that men should suffer because of it and at the same time should ask to be delivered from such suffering. Then we have the godless belief that man has a dual nature, for which God is of course responsible; that He endowed man with five physical senses which know absolutely nothing of Spirit, and the evidence of which is the only possible basis for a belief in evil. With this delusive panorama constantly in view, what other could be expected of mortal consciousness than a magnified sense of evil in its myriad forms!
