The question, "How do we resist evil?" finds an answer in the following words by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science: "Goodness involuntarily resists evil" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 210). But one may ask: How do we attain that state of goodness which is required? What comprises this goodness?
One day two students of Christian Science were discussing the sentence quoted above. One of them remarked that in divine Science, goodness should not need to fight evil. The other replied that although a mighty struggle is sometimes required by the individual in order to resist evil's allurements, this struggle is not good's involuntary resistance, which affords complete and instantaneous protection from evil.
To illustrate this point, the second student continued: "You manufacture paint. When you advertise a kind of paint which resists certain weather conditions, do you mean that your paint has to rise up and fight the weather? Do you not mean instead that because of the qualities inherent in the paint, it is naturally impervious to those weather conditions?"
