No sooner is the student of Christian Science confronted with the problem of evil than the question arises how best to prove its unreality, how most successfully to overcome its claims to a power which assumes to be opposed to good. The problem of destroying evil is as old as evil's claim to existence; yet, the method of solving it has only been made available through the discovery in modern times of Christian Science by Mary Baker Eddy. While Christ Jesus scientifically destroyed evil and its effects in all its forms, the spiritual understanding which accomplished this practically disappeared; and it remained for this woman of spiritual vision, who clearly discerned the Christ-idea as manifested by the Nazarene to discover, through divine revelation, the rule for performing this all-important service for mankind. Even in the early centuries of Christianity, evil was recognized as mental, having its abiding place only in the beliefs of mortals. Origen, the apostolic Father, stated this fact; but, notwithstanding that to overcome evil was then, as now, mankind's greatest need, he did not reveal how it could be done.
In direct contradiction to evil's claims, Christian Science specifically teaches—and, it may be said, proves its ground—that evil is but a false belief, a negation, having no basis in fact, no origin, creator, law or kingdom; and, furthermore, that even its claim to existence—the belief—is imaginary, a figment of so-called mortal mind, an illusion striving to present itself as an entity to be recognized as legitimate and real. Although Mrs. Eddy has emphatically stated the unreality of evil,—even proving her contention by practical demonstration,—since its claims to reality still present themselves as a phase of human experience, they are to be dealt with in the demonstration of harmonious being.
The urgent demands for recognition by the material world, with its concomitants of discord, sin, evil, and disease, are sometimes, even by students of Christian Science, apparently endowed with a degree of reality as it were, in the hope thereby to mollify and mitigate them. On page 527 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy pertinently asks the question, "Has evil the reality of good?" and answers it with a definiteness that admits of no doubt: "Evil is unreal because it is a lie,—false in every statement." Yet, in spite of this direct assertion, Christian Scientists not infrequently find themselves striving to overcome and destroy evil as something having existence,—that is, as an entity possessing power and some degree of reality; and this, despite the constant iteration and reiteration by our Leader of the unreality of evil.
