MUCH of the objection to the teaching of Christian Science respecting the unreality of evil is on the ground that evil supplies an essential condition to the perfectibility of man, God's image and likeness! It is averred that moral character is dependent upon the making of choice between right and wrong, and that if there were not a real evil as well as a real good, such choice or determination would be impossible, and man's so-called freedom become a farce.
It is argued that if man were not free to choose the wrong, he would be a mere automaton, without merit for his right doing, and wholly lacking in that virtue which is the fruitage of loyalty to good despite the seductions of evil. This theological devotion to the making of a man who is good, not for the reason that he cannot be anything else, but because he has willed to resist evil and has overcome it, makes immediate appeal to thought. It presents life as an epic, and the hero, as they say, is not a man of putty, not a willy-nilly, forever repeating that which is spoken by another, but a man who is superior to circumstance, self-made and self-governed in the best and truest sense.
This question of the nature of man is vital; it relates itself to everything that is worth while, and in thinking of it we need to remember, first of all, that whatever pertains to an image must pertain to its original; whatever is necessary to man must therefore be necessary to Deity. If the ignorance of the ideal, or the irresponsiveness to it which results in a choice of evil, pertains to the noblest kind of a man, it must also pertain to the noblest kind of a God; and this philosophy of evil as essential to the production of man, thus lands us at once in the most pronounced dualism. Zoroaster has come to his own!
