Today we are all out to win a victory which we trust will end wars forever. Our first step is to know what it is we are fighting. We must understand the nature and the strategy of the foe in order that we may determine the most effective means for its extinction.
No war has been permanently won, because the originating evil has not been traced to its inception and destroyed there. Although a so-called peace has often been declared, some subtler form of evil has been allowed to slip through unmolested, to propagate more of its kind.
The first record we have of evil is when it subtly voiced itself in the form of a serpent. On page 594 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy defines this serpent in part as "the first audible claim that God was not omnipotent and that there was another power, named evil, which was as real and eternal as God. good." Here was the primal lie against the first and only truth, and war had begun.
