"Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison" (Matt. 5:25). So spoke Jesus to his followers in the Sermon on the Mount. The writer pondered this text many times without seeming to grasp the spiritual import of the words. Through the study of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, she knew the adversary to be evil, or mortal mind. On page 564 of this book we read, "From Genesis to the Apocalypse, sin, sickness, and death, envy, hatred, and revenge,—all evil,—are typified by a serpent, or animal subtlety."
Certainly Jesus recognized the nature of the adversary, for at another time he referred to him as "a murderer from the beginning" who "abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him" (John 8:44). Then, questioned the writer, when Jesus bade us, "Agree with thine adversary," was he asking us to agree with—to be actually in accord with—evil or mortal mind?
A careful study of John 8:44, part of which has already been quoted, in which Jesus not only denounces but exposes the very nature of evil or mortal mind, threw much light upon the subject for the writer. Speaking to mortal man, Jesus said: "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."
