Problems of Immanence Part 5

But if it is true that G.o.d bestowed freedom upon us because only as free agents could we learn to love and do the right for its own sake; if it is true that the struggle which we have to wage against our lower impulses has the wholly benevolent object of enabling us to achieve the glory of a perfected character, it has also to be borne in mind that under no {103} circ.u.mstances can character be conceived otherwise than as the "result" of growth. That is to say, G.o.d Himself could not call moral perfection into being ready-made, by a mere _fiat_, and that for the same reason which precludes omnipotence itself from making two straight lines to enclose a s.p.a.ce, _i.e._, because the idea involves a self-contradiction. So true is this that we read even of our Saviour that "though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered," and in this manner was "made perfect." Character in its very definition is the result of many deliberate exercises of a free will; and if the evolution of character was an object dearer to G.o.d than the highest mechanical or animal perfection, that object could have been secured in no other way than by this particular endowment.

And here we shall also find the reply to the very natural inquiry why G.o.d does not, as He might, intervene or frustrate the evil designs of wrong-doers. Why does a good G.o.d allow His intentions to be set at defiance by those whom the prophet described as drawing iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope? It would not matter so much, we sometimes bitterly reflect, if the sinner injured only himself by his wickedness; but how often are the innocent made to suffer by the devices of the unscrupulous and selfish! Why, we repeat, this strange non-intervention of the Most High on behalf of His own cause? {104} On this it must be remarked in the first place that those who accept G.o.d's transcendence will be careful not to rule out _a priori_ the possibility of such Divine action as, regarded from our point of view, would have to be described as intervention; the question whether such action has ever taken place, is a question of fact, and the view that at particular junctures G.o.d has thus actively "intervened" is at any rate capable of being strongly argued. But admitting, as we think we must, that ordinary life does not show any instances of such supernatural interposition--that a reckless financier is allowed to enrich himself by cornering the wheat supply and sending up the price of the people's bread; that a band of reactionaries may arrest the course of reform and plunge a country back into darkness; that a beneficent act of the legislature may be defeated by greedy cunning--must we despair of solving the general problem which such cases suggest?

We think, on the contrary, that the explanation may be legitimately sought in what we conceive to have been the Divine intention in making man free; that intention, the making of character, would obviously suffer defeat by G.o.d throwing His weight--if we may use such a phrase--into this scale as against that, furthering here and checking there, for character, as we just said, can only result from the free exercise and interplay of will with will. We may well imagine G.o.d's mode of action to {105} resemble that of a human parent who entrusts a growing child with a growing measure of liberty and responsibility, well knowing that in the use of it he will have many a slip and stumble, and occasionally hurt himself; such a parent will carefully refrain from interference, preferring that the child should learn his own lessons from his own mistakes, well knowing that we profit only by the experience for which we ourselves have paid. No one will, of course, pretend that such a reconciliation of the facts of sin with the axiom or intuition of Divine all-goodness is other than incomplete; we merely urge that, having regard to the magnitude and the complexity of the subject it could not be otherwise. A theory, without accounting for all the facts, may be true so far as it goes, correctly indicating the way which, if we could pursue it further, would lead us into more and fuller truth. No doubt, when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part will be done away; but pending the advent of a complete explanation, a partial one is not without all value.

Indeed, the very inadequacy of our instruments, resulting in that incompleteness of which we just spoke, should once more suggest a reflection which, while in no wise original or startling, is specially relevant to the subject under discussion: for if G.o.d's knowledge necessarily and immeasurably transcends ours, if He knows _more_ than we, does it not follow {106} with equal certainty that He knows _better_? Granted that we do not understand how this or that dispensation of Providence fits in with the general belief in His perfect goodness, our failure to understand no more disproves that goodness than the similar failure of a child to comprehend why such and such irksome tasks are imposed upon him by his parent, disproves the wisdom and goodness which prompt the parent's act. The child _cannot_ understand; but where the relations are at all normal he acquiesces, being on general grounds convinced that the parental commands aim at his welfare, and that his parents, after all, know better than he. Is the application so far to seek?

In the second place--turning now from the subject of sin to that of evil generally--it may be worth while to remind ourselves of a fact which seems to be forgotten by some of the impetuous arraigners of the Deity, _viz._, that, after all, the problem is not a new one, which they have suddenly discovered by dint of superior sagacity. What we mean is this: the problem of evil as such is of anything but an abstruse or remote nature, nor one requiring unusual philosophical penetration to bring to light; on the contrary, pain and sorrow, privation, adversity, death--these are experiences that have come within the cognisance of all. If, then, the facts are neither so remote nor so inconsiderable that men could have simply {107} forgotten to take them into account in framing their estimates of the Divine character, how is it, we ask, that they have arrived at and clung to the belief in the benevolence of G.o.d at all? If the proof to the contrary was so overpowering, why, as a matter of fact, has it _not_ overpowered them? Why should an unknown Hebrew singer have given expression to this extraordinary sentiment, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him"--and why has that sentiment been re-echoed by millions of men and women acquainted with grief and affliction? The early Christians did not exactly live lives of luxury or even security, sheltered from contact with tragedy and horror; yet the keynote of primitive Christianity is the note of joy, while the background of early Christian experience is a radiant conviction of the Divine benevolence. And when we remember that the same holds true of so many eminently spiritual souls in all ages, who have combined a keen sensitiveness to evil and suffering of every kind with an unshakeable trust in the lovingkindness of G.o.d, we shall scarcely accuse all this cloud of witnesses of having simply drugged themselves and refused to accept the evidence of their own senses. If men and women suffering from anything rather than moral blindness or moral anaesthesia could, and can, nevertheless believe with all their hearts in the Divine Fatherhood, is not such a recurring circ.u.mstance significant in itself?

{108} Evidently, granting all the facts, more than one reading of the facts is possible; not cloistered mystics, or anchorites withdrawn from the world, but heroes engaged in fighting its ills, have steadfastly proclaimed that G.o.d is good; is it an altogether unreasonable hypothesis that their faith, if it outsoars ours, may be the result of a deeper insight?

And this, in turn, suggests another thought, simple enough in itself, yet not always borne in mind in connection with this particular theme--_viz._, that we are never dealing with facts _per se_, but with facts _plus_ our interpretation of them, which may be right or wrong, but which, right or wrong, helps to decide in a very large measure what the facts themselves shall mean to us. Our att.i.tude towards the events which befall us makes all the difference. If men have been ruined by success, it is as true that men have been made by failure. If men have deteriorated through ease and plenty, men have been stimulated to effort through hardship and poverty. In a word, if there is much in the burden, there is as much in the shouldering. But for Dante's consecration of sorrow, the world would have lost the _Commedia Divina_. But for a painful and permanently disabling accident, the English Labour Movement would not have had one of its princ.i.p.al leaders in Mr. Philip Snowden. And as for the influence of outward events and environment generally, Mr. Chesterton may exaggerate in {109} suggesting that everything good has been s.n.a.t.c.hed from some catastrophe, but he is certainly right when he says that "the most dangerous environment of all is the commodious environment." On the other hand, of an environment the reverse of commodious, it has been observed:--

Logic would seem to say, "If G.o.d brings great pain on a man, it must make the man revolt against G.o.d." But observation of facts compels us to say, "No, on the contrary, nothing exercises so extraordinary an influence in making men love G.o.d as the suffering of great pain at His hands." Scientific thinking deals with facts as they are, not with _a priori_ notions of what we should expect. And in this matter, the fact as it is, is that goodness is evolved from pain more richly than from any other source.[1]

We may think such a statement too absolute, and point to cases where the effect of physical suffering has been altogether different; but if it is true that in certain well-authenticated and not merely exceptional instances such visitations have resulted in strengthened faith and heightened goodness, our main contention is proved, namely, that the att.i.tude of the individual himself towards the events of his life has much to do with determining what those events are to mean to him. Instead of "Was the gift good?" we should more often ask, "Was the recipient wise?" Pain is pain, and disaster is disaster; but the spirit in which we meet them matters immensely.

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But now we are confronted with a more fundamental question: Could not G.o.d have obviated the phenomenon of pain altogether? Could He not have made us incapable of feeling any but pleasant sensations? Mill, who in his essay on _Nature_ devotes some--for him--almost vehement pages to this subject, reaches the conclusion that "the only admissible moral theory of Creation is that the Principle of Good _cannot_ at once and altogether subdue the powers of evil" [2]; and in dealing with the same topic in the essay on _Theism_, while admitting that "appearances do not indicate that contrivance was brought into play purposely to produce pain," he holds to the view that its very existence shows the power of G.o.d to be limited _ab extra_, by the material conditions under which He works:--

The author of the machinery is no doubt accountable for having made it susceptible to pain; but this may have been a necessary condition of its susceptibility to pleasure; a supposition which avails nothing on the theory of an omnipotent Creator, but is an extremely probable one in the case of a Contriver working under the limitation of inexorable laws and indestructible properties of matter.[3]

Such a view of the case, as we have already said in our previous chapter, is purely deistic; but we must now proceed to point out, with great respect for so great an intellect as Mill's, that the supposition which, he says, "avails nothing {111} on the theory of an omnipotent Creator"--_viz._, that susceptibility to pleasure involves susceptibility to pain--seems to us to fit and cover the facts precisely; for a capacity for pain and a capacity for pleasure are not two different things which could conceivably exist apart from each other, but are only different manifestations of one and the same capacity, _viz._, for experiencing sensations of any kind whatsoever.

We could no more be capable of feeling pleasure, while _in_capable of feeling pain, than we could be sensitive to musical harmonies, while _in_sensible to musical discords; besides which, monotony of sensation annihilates sensation. On this point we may invoke against the pre-evolutionist Mill a modern scientific authority like Professor Fiske, who expresses himself to the effect that "without the element of antagonism there could be no consciousness, and therefore no world."

"It is not a superficial but a fundamental truth," he observes, "that if there were no colour but red, it would be exactly the same thing as if there were no colour at all. . . If our ears were to be filled with one monotonous roar of Niagara, unbroken by alien sounds, the effect upon consciousness would be absolute silence. If our palates had never come in contact with any tasteful thing save sugar, we should know no more of sweetness than of bitterness. If we had never felt physical pain, we could not recognise physical pleasure. For {112} want of the contrasted background, its pleasurableness would cease to exist. . .

We are thus brought to a striking conclusion, the essential soundness of which cannot be gainsaid. _In a happy world there must be sorrow and pain._" [4] And this necessity, we would add, does not follow from G.o.d's failure to overcome any "inexorable laws and indestructible properties _of matter_," but is implied in the inexorable laws _of thought_--in that eternal right reason which makes it impossible for Deity to do what is self-contradictory or absurd.

But if the necessity of pain be thus admitted--a most important admission--we may now take a step further ahead. Even Mill, as we just saw, expressly disclaimed the notion of attributing physical evil to malign intention on the Creator's part; what separates us from Mill is that in our view the laws of nature, in inflicting pain, do not act independently of G.o.d, but are His laws. Do those, it may be asked, who allege His "indifference" in not interfering with the operation of the forces of nature when they injure us, frame a very clear notion of the way in which they think that G.o.d should, or might, manifest His "interest"? On reflection it will be found that what they ask for--the only possible alternative to an unbroken natural order--is such constant miraculous interposition as would make that order non-existent. But a.s.suming that there {113} were no regular sequence or uniformity to speak of--if we never knew whether the course of nature might not be interrupted at any moment on somebody's behalf--should we really be so much better off? Would humanity be happier if chaos was subst.i.tuted for order? Without seeking to mitigate the suffering entailed by the unhindered action of nature's forces, it is still certain that the sheer confusion of a world in which law had been abrogated would be infinitely worse. Indeed, this is to understate the case; for the fact is that in such a world all the activities of life would be completely paralysed, and hence life itself, as we have already had occasion to point out, could not be carried on. But if the reign of natural law thus represents the only set of conditions under which life is even possible; and if at the same time this law, which operates all the time and never relaxes its hold, is the expression of the will of G.o.d, how can we charge Him with indifference? The truth is, on the contrary, that He is exercising His care, not intermittently, by performing a miracle whenever things go wrong, but continually, and without any interruption whatsoever. Were His law other than steadfast, were there occasional or frequent departures from it, were it possible to defy nature with impunity just now and again, the results of such irregular action would be disastrous in the extreme; it is because His will is constant, and His decrees without {114} variableness, that we are able to learn and obey them, and by obeying to master nature.

"But, after all, He made the laws, and He could have made different ones." Certainly; but a moment's reflection will show that He could not have made laws of _any_ kind, disobedience to which would have had the same consequences as obedience. He might--for all we can say to the contrary--have made strychnine nutritious, and wheat deadly to us; but even in that case an indulgence in wheat would have brought about the unpleasant effects at present a.s.sociated with an overdose of _nux vomica_. He might have made a raw, damp atmosphere, with easterly winds, the most conducive to health; but even then it would have been rash to take up one's residence in a warm, dry climate. Pain is an indication that the processes of life are suffering some more or less serious disturbance; given, therefore, any set of natural laws, and the necessity of obeying them as the condition of life itself, and we see that disobedience to them would always and inevitably mean pain. We repeat that G.o.d might have made different laws; but whatever they were, their breach must have recoiled upon the breaker.

Yet even if reflections like these demonstrate to us the necessity for pain, we are still left to face those greater calamities and disasters which sweep away human lives by the hundred and thousand, catastrophes like the Sicilian {115} earthquakes, that are marked by an appalling wantonness of destruction; must not such events as these also be attributed to G.o.d, and how are they to be reconciled with His alleged benevolence? Certainly, no one would attempt to minimise the horrors of the Sicilian tragedy; the human mind is overwhelmed by the suddenness, no less than the magnitude, of an upheaval of nature resulting in the blotting-out of whole flourishing communities. And yet we venture to say, paradoxical though it sounds, that it is, partly at least, owing to a certain lack of imagination that such an event looms so immense in our thoughts. Most of us do not make the ordinance of death in itself an accusation against the Most High; we are not specially shocked or outraged by the thought that the whole population of the globe dies out within quite a moderate span of time, nor even by the reflection that several hundred thousand persons die every year in the United Kingdom alone. We know quite well that every one of those who perished in Messina must have paid his debt to nature in, at most, a few decades. So, then, the whole point in our arraignment is this--It would not have been cruel had these deaths been spread over a period of time, but it is cruel that they should have taken place simultaneously; it would not have been cruel had the victims of the earthquake died of illnesses--in many cases prolonged and painful--but it is cruel {116} that death should have come upon them swiftly, instantaneously, without menace or lingering pain; it would not have been cruel had children survived to mourn their parents, husbands their wives, brother the loss of brother, as in the ordinary course--but it is cruel that by dying in the same hour they were spared the pang of parting. We repeat that it is because we ordinarily use our imaginations too little that we are so apt to lose our balance and sense of proportion in the presence of these catastrophes; and it may be permissible to point out that there is probably, quality for quality, and quant.i.ty for quant.i.ty, more grey, hopeless suffering, more wretchedness and tragedy, in London to-day than was caused by the Sicilian catastrophe--suffering and wretchedness that are due not to nature, but to sin, though not necessarily on the sufferer's part.

And there is, in justice, something more to be said when we speak of these dire visitations. While every instinct of humanity inspires us with sympathy for the victims buried under the ruins of Messina and Reggio, it is, of course, a matter of common knowledge that the soil on those coasts is volcanic, and liable to such commotions; if men will take the risk of living in such localities, we may pity them when the disaster comes, but we cannot very fitly impeach Providence. There is a village near Chur in Switzerland, which has twice been wiped out by avalanches, yet each time re-built {117} on the same spot; year by year material is visibly acc.u.mulating for a third deadly fall, and when it takes place, as take place it will, men will speak of the dispa.s.sionate cruelty of nature. Time after time the lava from Mount Vesuvius has overwhelmed the localities that nestle on its slopes, but human heedlessness proves incurable. If the Sicilians, knowing the nature of the soil, had built their towns of isolated, one-storied, wooden structures, at a reasonable distance from the sh.o.r.e, the effects of earthquake and tidal wave would not have been one hundredth part as terrible; yet Messina is being re-built on its former site, and apparently in the old style of architecture--a proceeding which simply invites a repet.i.tion of the same kind of disaster. It is literally true that these greater calamities are in nearly every instance capable of being averted or their incidence minimised; to give an obvious instance, one is almost weary of seeing it repeated that the famines and consequent epidemics which visit India could be immensely reduced by a wise and generous expenditure on irrigation, the improved cultivation of the land, the enlargement of the cultivable area, and so forth. But men find it easier to turn accusing glances to the sky than to bestir themselves and to use more wisdom, foresight and energy in directing and subduing the forces of nature.

We are well aware that what has been written in the pages of this chapter is no {118} more than a series of scattered hints; we do not for a moment imagine that, in the aggregate, they amount to more than a most fragmentary resolution of the difficulty presented by the reality of evil--indeed, we have already expressed our belief that a full solution must in the nature of things lie beyond our ken. But if it should appear from the foregoing considerations that some aspects of our problem--such as the existence of sin and of pain--are not as irreconcilable with the goodness of G.o.d as may have seemed to be the case, reflection should lead us to the reasonable hope that if we understood more, we should receive fuller and fuller proof of the truth that G.o.d is Love. And when we remember that that Love shines out most brightly from the Cross, and that the world's greatest tragedy has been the world's greatest blessing, the turning-point in the history of the race, we may well hush our impatience, refrain over-confident criticisms, and commit ourselves to the Father's hands even while we can only see His purposes as in a gla.s.s, darkly. We may believe, with the psalmist of old, that by and by we "shall behold His face in _righteousness_; we shall be satisfied, when we awake, with His likeness."

[1] R. A. Armstrong, _G.o.d and the Soul_, pp. 161-162.

[2] _Op. cit._, p. 21.

[3] _Ibid_, p. 82.

[4] _Through Nature to G.o.d_, pp. 36, 37.

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CHAPTER VIII

THE DENIAL OF EVIL

We closed our last chapter with a confession and an appeal--a confession of the incompleteness of our answers to the questions suggested by the fact of evil, and an appeal for patience in recognising that that incompleteness is inevitable, having regard to our const.i.tutional limitations. "There is," as Newman said, "a certain grave acquiescence in ignorance, a recognition of our impotence to solve momentous and urgent questions, which has a satisfaction of its own." [1] That, however, is an att.i.tude to which all will not resign themselves. If a knot cannot be unravelled, their one idea of what to do is to cut it; if evil cannot be explained, it can at any rate be denied. Thus we find a distinguished living essayist, with a large const.i.tuency of cultured readers, writing as follows:--

The essence of G.o.d's omnipotence is that both law and matter are His and originate from Him; so that if a single fibre of what we know to be evil can be found in the world, either G.o.d is responsible for that, or He is {120} dealing with something He did not originate and cannot overcome.

Nothing can extricate us from this dilemma, except that what we think evil is not really evil at all, but hidden good.

If the views of Divine power and responsibility set forth in this book are true--if, _i.e._, we are justified in having recourse to a theory of Divine self-limitation--it will be clear that Mr. Benson's "dilemma" is, to say the least, overstated; but were that dilemma as desperate as he depicts it, it has strangely escaped him that his suggested mode of extrication is more desperate still. For what he asks us to do is quite simply to abdicate our judgment in respect of both physical and ethical phenomena--not merely to withhold our decision upon this or that particular occurrence, but to admit in general terms that evil is only apparent and not real. But see to what such an admission commits us: if we have no grounds for saying that evil is evil, we can have no grounds either for saying that good is good; if our faculties are incompetent to diagnose the one kind of phenomena accurately, they cannot be any more competent to diagnose and deliver reliable verdicts upon the other kind.

It is quite a mistake to think that by getting rid of the reality of evil we preserve or affirm the more emphatically the reality of good; if we confidently p.r.o.nounce our experience of evil an illusion, what value can there attach to our finding that our {121} experience of its opposite is a fact? Such is the Nemesis which waits on remedies of the "heroic"

order.

Nevertheless this particular remedy seems to be enjoying a considerable popularity at the present time; indeed, in discussing some aspects of the doctrine which affirms the "allness" of G.o.d, and the allied one of Monism, we have already seen that where these are professed, evil must be explicitly or implicitly denied. This denial is common to the various confused movements--all of them the outcome of a misconceived idealism--which under the names of "New Thought," "Higher Thought," "Joy Philosophy," "Christian Science," etc., etc., find their disciples chiefly amongst that not inconsiderable section of the public which has been aptly described as dominated by a "longing to combine a picturesque certainty devoid of moral discipline with unlimited transcendental speculations." All these cults combine a vague optimism with an extravagant subjectivity; all would have us believe that so far from things being what they are, they are whatever we may think them to be; all with one accord treat evil in its various manifestations as unreal, and maintain, as it has been neatly phrased, that "the process of cure lies in the realisation that there is nothing to be cured." The attraction of such a doctrine for that large number of persons who dislike strenuous effort--either intellectual or {122} moral--is easily accounted for. Evil as a fact is not conducive to the comfort of those who contemplate it--how pleasant to be told that it exists only in disordered imaginations; the sense of sin has always interfered with the enjoyment of life--what a relief to learn that it is merely a chimaera; pain is grievous indeed--what benefactors are those who teach us how to conjure it away by the simple process of declaring that there is no such thing! A creed promising to accomplish such desirable objects could be sure of votaries, if proclaimed with sufficient _aplomb_; here, we may surmise, is the main explanation of the welcome given to those monistic ethics to which we referred in an earlier chapter, and of the vogue of so-called "Christian Science," which invites consideration as the most typical and important of a whole group of movements.

We repeat that the nature of the Christian Science appeal largely explains the rapid spread of this cult. Christian Science is quite unlike other religions in this, that while they promise at most salvation--an intangible boon--Mrs. Eddy promises her followers _health_, relief from bodily pain and sickness, and thus addresses herself to a universally and urgently felt want. A merely spiritual message may fail to obtain listeners; but--to state the truth baldly--a person need not be particularly spiritually-minded in order to be drawn towards Christian Science. The natural man would much rather {123} be made well than made good, and a creed which professes to be able to do the former will touch him in his most sensitive part. Certainly, this was one of the difficulties of Christ's public ministry, _viz._, that the people flocked to Him to be cured rather than to be taught. But while He declined to place the emphasis on His works of healing--while He left Capernaum by Himself before sunrise in order to escape the importunities of the mob, and refused Peter's request that He should return thither with the words, "Let us go elsewhere into the next towns that I may preach there also; for to _this_ end came I forth"--Christian Science addresses its sure appeal to man's material nature. The contrast is significant.

And yet the true essence of Christian Science is not "faith-healing" in the ordinary sense. It does not say, _e.g._, "Here is a case of genuine, unmistakeable rheumatism or consumption, but faith is able to dispel it"; on the contrary, it says, "This alleged rheumatism or consumption is a mere illusion, a phantasm of the imagination; and the way to be cured is for the 'patient' to discover his mistake. There are no maladies--there are only _malades imaginaires_." Mrs. Eddy states in plain words that "Mortal ills are but errors of thought" [2]; it is from this point of view that Christian Science as a system has to be approached and understood.

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With the fantastic exegesis of Scripture on which this creed professes to be based, we are not directly concerned; else something might be said of the method of interpretation which is to be found in the official text-book of the movement--a method which sees in the serpent the symbol of malicious animal magnetism, which identifies the Holy Ghost and the New Jerusalem with Christian Science, and the little book brought down from heaven by the mighty angel with Mrs. Eddy's own _magnum opus_, _Science and Health_. As Mr. Podmore drily remarks, "In these holy games each player is at liberty to make words mean what he wants them to mean"; at the same time, these grotesque and arbitrary constructions are not precisely calculated to inspire the confidence of balanced minds.

Let us, however, turn at once to the fundamental axioms of Christian Science:--

(1) G.o.d is All in all.

(2) G.o.d is Good. Good is Mind.

(3) G.o.d, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter.

(4) Life, G.o.d, Omnipotent Good, deny death, evil, sin, disease.

In other words, Christian Science begins--and, for the matter of that, ends--with the categorical statement that the one and only Reality is Mind, Goodness, G.o.d, all three of which terms it uses synonymously and interchangeably. So much being granted, the rest follows "in a concatenation according"; the {125} possible permutations are many--the result is always one. _G.o.d is All_: hence, says Mrs. Eddy, "_All is G.o.d_, and there is naught beside Him"; but _G.o.d is Good_, and as He is _All_, it follows that _All is Good_; and if all is good, _there can be no evil_. Again, Mrs. Eddy propounds the following three propositions: _G.o.d is Mind; Good is Mind; All is Mind_; therefore, once more, all is good, all is G.o.d, and _there can be no evil_. Or, to introduce another variation--_G.o.d is All_, and _G.o.d is Mind_; therefore _Mind is all_; therefore _there is no matter_. Grant the Christian Science premises, and there is no escaping the Christian Science conclusions.

But do we grant these premises--do we grant Mrs. Eddy's fundamental pantheistic a.s.sumption of "the allness of G.o.d" [3]? We have shown again and again why we do not; and with the rejection of the basal tenet of Christian Science the superstructure follows. But now let us show how all Mrs. Eddy's juggling with words, all her a.s.sertions of the goodness of all and the allness of good, do not help her to get rid of evil.

Granting for argument's sake that Mind is the only reality, then the test of reality must be this--that something exists in or for a mind; in so far, {126} then, as evil, pain, and so forth exist, as Christian Science tells us, "only" in some mind--in so far as "disease is a thing of thought" [4]--evil, pain, disease, etc., must _pro tanto_ be real, nay, the most real of realities, for where except in mind could they exist?

And even if we can successfully annihilate them by denying their existence, whence did they come in the first place? From "malicious animal magnetism"? But if G.o.d is All in all, and All-good, what is that malicious animal magnetism which is somehow not G.o.d and not good? Does not this whole tangle serve yet once more to ill.u.s.trate the futility of that doctrine of Divine allness which we have seen successfully masquerading as Divine immanence?

Let us test the worth of these speculations in yet another way.

Christian Science declares evil to be non-existent, illusory, an "error of thought." But that which is true of a species must be true of all its genera; if all men are mortal, and Socrates is a man, it follows that Socrates is mortal; if evil as a whole is nonexistent, that which applies to the general phenomenon must equally apply to each and all of its manifestations. But error is undoubtedly a form, and even a serious form, of evil; from which it would follow that if evil is not real, error is not possible--and in that case one opinion is as good as its opposite, and black and white are only different {127} descriptions of the same thing. But if that is so, if one thing is as true as another, we shall conclude that, _e.g._, the rejection of Christian Science is no more erroneous than its affirmation. Will Christian Scientists acquiesce in that inference? And if they will not, by what means do they propose to show that it is not a legitimate deduction from their own axiom, the unreality of evil? If error is a real fact, evil must be so to that extent; on the other hand, how can it be an error to believe that evil is real, if error, being an evil, must itself be illusory?