Probably nothing that Christian Science teaches is more vigorously or more subtly resisted than its appraisal of evil as nothingness. Yet a clear understanding of this appraisal is an essential factor in healing the sick and in overcoming every type of error that besets mankind. Mary Baker Eddy shows the inconsistency of mortals in "Unity of Good," where she writes (p. 60), "We call God omnipotent and omnipresent, and then conjure up, from the dark abyss of nothingness, a powerful presence named evil." By doing this, we often deserve James' description of a mortal as "a double minded man," who "is unstable in all his ways" (James 1:8). For stable thinking and a genuine demonstration of spiritual power, the single-mindedness that accepts nothing adverse to God's allness and goodness as real is needed.
To human sense evil appears as an active force that accomplishes disaster. But to the spiritually-minded its activities and accomplishments represent total negation, unreality. They know that the positive expression of good silences the belief of evil action, but that error's nothingness is proved only by its disappearance. So they do not ignore evil, but work with diligence and persistence to prove what they declare regarding it.
Christ Jesus did not soften or modify his analysis of error, or "the devil," which we find in the eighth chapter of John (verse 44). He said, "He... abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him." This analysis is unconditional, absolute. It bases our Leader's description of evil's source as a "dark abyss of nothingness" and explains the Revelator's "bottomless pit," out of which arose "the beast that was, and is not, and yet is" (Rev. 17:8). As darkness has no element of light, cold no degree of warmth, a lie no vestige of truth, so evil has no measure of good and consequently no reality whatever. Living in the light, we know no darkness; living in the consciousness of Spirit, we know no evil sense.
