Nonexistence is a strong term. It is a radical term. When it is used in regard to evil, it is a revolutionary term. In studying Christian Science, one finds that the nonexistence of evil is not a philosophy of escapism but is a deeply metaphysical fact which needs to be comprehended and proved. In Science this proof is a moral demand.
Human reason based upon what appears to the physical senses cannot grasp the fact that evil is nonexistent. The evidence of matter, with its accompaniments of sickness, sin, and death, is too strong for merely human reason to deny. But spiritualized human consciousness, the consciousness which is seeking the truth of all things and finding it in the revelation of God's existence and government of all, is beginning to fathom the implications of acknowledging God's infinitude. Reasoning from the basis of Spirit's allness, one can come to only one right conclusion—that evil is nothing, is not present, is nonexistent.
Christ Jesus had the most perfectly spiritualized consciousness of anyone who has ever appeared on this planet. And he not only taught the nonexistence of the devil, or evil, but worked out this fact. He said of the devil (John 8:44): "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."
It took one with a clear vision of the All-God, apparent only to spiritual sense, to reason logically from this standpoint and come to the radical conclusion that evil and matter, which is the effect of evil, constitute the liar and its lie. Mary Baker Eddy had this vision. Christian Science, which she discovered, teaches this inspired reasoning, and the success of students in destroying sin and sickness and every kind of discord is in proportion to their actual understanding of the nonexistence of these errors.
Mrs. Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 259), "The spiritual elevator of the human race, physically, morally, and Christianly, is the truism that Truth demonstrates good, and is natural; while error, or evil, is really nonexistent, and must have produced its own illusion,—for it belongs not to nature nor to God."
The more spiritualized one becomes through his humble acknowledgment of God's infinitude and man's immortal existence as His spiritual expression, the more unconscious one becomes of evil. But this does not mean that evil in any form is ignored or permitted by Christian Scientists or left to work out its destructive ends. The very contrary is the case. For the true Scientist never rests until he has realized so fully the nonexistence of the error confronting him that error fades into the nonentity that it is.
One great point in the practice of Christian metaphysics is that evil is not a power or a law, a situation, or a thing which must be pounced upon mentally and destroyed. Evil is nonexistent before a Christian Science treatment is given or a single denial of error is made. The work of the Scientist is to adjust his thinking to a revolutionary and radical evaluation of evil as nonexistent. The thing to be proved is that evil is not present in the first place.
In order to prove the revolutionary fact of evil's nonexistence, one must honestly reject the physical senses, which produce and observe whatever is wrong or material. Matter itself must be known as illusion because it represents a limited view of something God has made; whereas all that God creates is unlimited—infinite in quality and expression.
The celebration in the United States of the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln reminds us that wars were fought which revolutionized the thinking of many people. But in "Miscellaneous Writings," Mrs. Eddy says (p. 101): "Christian Science and the senses are at war. It is a revolutionary struggle. We already have had two in this nation; and they began and ended in a contest for the true idea, for human liberty and rights. Now cometh a third struggle; for the freedom of health, holiness, and the attainment of heaven."
Radical stands provoke revolutions. And while certain radical stands for freedom provoked revolutions in the two wars mentioned, the revolution being brought about by the firm stand of Christian Science that evil is nonexistent is more fundamental by far in its purpose and its effects. This revolution is a struggle between reality and a lie, between what is and what is not, between substance and illusion. No doubt the disturbances going on in the world today come from the challenge of Truth as it breaks through the opacity of sense-existence and reveals the heaven of God, which Jesus proved to be the only reality.
Mrs. Eddy says in her Message to The Mother Church for 1901 (p. 9), "The Holy Spirit takes of the things of God and showeth them unto the creature; and these things being spiritual, they disturb the carnal and destroy it; they are revolutionary, reformatory, and—now, as aforetime—they cast out evils and heal the sick."
A few decades ago, the world little realized what a radical change would come in regard to the constituents of matter or to the revolution in thought this change would provoke. The revelation of Christian Science that evil is nonexistent is stirring human thought to the very basis of its limitations. This is a revolution which must be carried through to the extinction of all belief in a mind that is not God and a creation which only counterfeits what God has established forever.
