God, good, is the cause and origin of all that really exists; therefore we cannot believe evil to be present and good absent. So-called mortal mind would have us believe that evil is governing the human relationships among families, friends, and nations. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy explains how to handle such an argument. On page 447 she says, "Expose and denounce the claims of evil and disease in all their forms, but realize no reality in them."
Evil is a lie and has no reality and no origin. It is always impersonal, but some individuals become its willing tools, or victims. The person who is being used by error must be awakened to that fact so that falsity may be put from his thinking and he may rise above it. In her Message to The Mother Church for 1901 Mrs. Eddy writes (pp. 12, 13), "Evil is neither quality nor quantity: it is not intelligence, a person or a principle, a man or a woman, a place or a thing, and God never made it."
Since God did not make evil, it has no power. Because God is all-powerful there can be no evil effects. Jesus told the Pharisees (Mark 7:15, 21-23), "There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man." Then he continued to explain that "from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these evil things come from within, and defile the man." One must keep his thinking on the side of good through the understanding of its allness and of evil's unreality.
