In these days of evil's desperate bid for supremacy, there is a natural tendency to concentrate on the destruction of its more immediate forms. Let these be but effaced, it is concluded, and all will be well. Yet vital as this certainty is, it does not constitute the whole picture. Experience and history, particularly the history of the last postwar period, show that it is not sufficient to suppress evil. The positive and constructive sense of good must be introduced in its place.
There is set forth in the twelfth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew a parable of a man out of whom an unclean spirit had been exorcised. Finding his late habitation "empty, swept, and garnished," the latter returned with "seven other spirits more wicked than himself," so that "the last state of that man is worse than the first."
Whatever measures may prove necessary for the immediate treatment of evil and its operations, whatever the righteous demands of justice and regeneration, humanity's ultimate salvation lies in a deeper and broader apprehension of God as universal good, and of man made and maintained in His image as the Scriptures teach. This true status of being Christian Science elucidates. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, puts it concisely on page 492 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," where she writes, "Being is holiness, harmony, immortality." Only as this becomes established in human consciousness can aggression, desperation, fear, hatred, and similar conditions be dispelled at home and abroad, and the Apostle Paul's incisive advice be implemented, "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."
