Everything having entity or reality owes its existence to the relation between cause and effect. These are inseparable, for one is dependent on the other, and there can be no effect without a cause. Christian Science refuses to recognize evil as real, because such an admission would contradict the allness of good. Although error claims to be as real as Truth, it cannot be true, for since all that God created is good, evil must be a nonentity.
In disclaiming reality for evil, Christian Science points to the declaration of the first commandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," a mandate which explicitly condemns the belief in any power apart from God. The meaning of omnipotence renders the concession of power to evil incompatible with the infinite nature of Deity. If we were to admit the existence of evil as a power, we would not only deny the meaning of all-power, but would place a limit in belief on the sphere of God's action as the Principle of the Science of Life.
A full understanding of the truth emphasized in the scientific statement of being, "Man is not material; he is spiritual" (Science and Health, p. 468), removes all question as to man's spiritual creation and his continuity of life, inseparable from God. In God's spiritual creation, including man as the image and likeness of God, all that He made was pronounced good; therefore in gaining the true idea we come to realize that no evil can exist. In God's perfect universe, including man, evil, a false sense of being, can have no place.
