The truth concerning evil's impersonal nature was stated in unmistakable terms by the Apostle Paul in the seventh chapter of his epistle to the Romans, but it was not until the year 1866, when Mary Baker Eddy discovered the Science of Christian metaphysics, that a fuller significance of this all-important fact was revealed so that it could be universally utilized in the overcoming of mental and physical inharmonies.
"For I know," writes Paul, that well-tried Christian, "that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not," he continues, "it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me." Thus he distinctly differentiates between his true spiritual selfhood as the sinless child of God and the generally accepted material misconception of man, commonly acknowledged as a mortal.
Man's complete and indisputable immunity from sin and discord could not have been more clearly or positively stated. In this declaration the writer totally exonerates man from even the remotest possibility of being considered a sinner, by declaring sin itself to be the sinner.
