The structures and superstructures of enterprise founded upon undisguised evil often seem so vast that it appears almost a thing incredible that evil is not the controlling force of the universe. Nations have arisen that have terrorized the world; bodies, formally or informally corporate, have laid excessive taxes on what is considered necessary to man's very existence; individuals have made slaves of their fellow men, and evil has prospered. In the history of the world of to-day and of past centuries the same phenomena present themselves. Should one have satisfaction in the thought of the final punishment of the wicked, he may read their triumphant exclamation in Isaiah, "We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves:" but the prophet continues, "Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste."
Men usually have their standards of good and evil which they continually apply, and it is of no moment whether Isaiah's comment referred to governments or individuals, to events in his own time, or prophetically to their prototype in later times, a Christian Scientist sees a far deeper meaning in it than any single circumstance or combination of circumstances would indicate. Even the highest good of material man is an abomination unto the Lord, for "there is none that doeth good, no, not one." This must necessarily be so, for mortal man himself is but a false statement and his highest standard of right and wrong is but the better part of a lie, if one may so express it. For example, the average man does not regard it as a sin to say, "I have a headache," because it involves no moral turpitude. Yet God is perfect and man is His reflection. Then it is impugning the perfection of Deity to affirm that there is something besides God's reflection. This is sin. To be sure, mortal man may have the headache. That is as Mrs. Eddy says on page 460 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "Sickness is neither imaginary nor unreal,—that is, to the frightened, false sense of the patient. Sickness is more than fancy; it is solid conviction. It is therefore to be dealt with through right apprehension of the truth of being." But the error comes in identifying God's man, the reflection of the one Ego, with the "I" of the suppositional man who has the "frightened, false sense" and considering them one and the same, instead of seeing the latter as a lie and nothing more, thus not recognizing the true man, who has not and never could have headache.
If there ever was a case of mistaken identity it is in this constantly accepting the man after the order of Adam for the man made in the image and likeness of God. It is not surprising in view of this constancy that men have made a covenant with death and are at agreement with hell. For what else are these seemings but parts of the same falsehood? So while the verse quoted above may refer to flagrant errors, it also rightly includes any act measured by a standard set up by material man, for we have seen that he and his best are but varying phases of untruth. It is at this point in our problem that the inspired Scriptures come to our aid and give us not a variable standard whereby to measure approximate good and bad but an all-sufficient truth, a fixed foundation, from which we may determine what is good, because that only is good which is real.
