Arizona republican., 1920-07-19
The UnreaIity of Sin

It was the method Of Jonathan Ed wards, as it was of the Puritan divines before him. to make sin so real and so powerful to his congregation, that they might have been forgiven for accept ing it as inevitable, and attempting to banish the terrors of hell in an orgy of dissipation. Sin is, of course. not thing to be made light Of. but it should
 be represented, not shorn of any of it's degrading or disgusting clements in deed, in a measure, even by dwelling on these, but shorn of it's attraction. and so largely of it's power. For it must be remembered that it is the sen- sUal attractiveness of sin which con stitutes the strength of sin, and the more this attractiveness is shown as the willo the wisp that it is, turing it's victim towards the nearest swamp of despair, the better for mankind. At the same time this is not enough in itself. There is one way and one way only in which sin can be truly over come, and that is through the under
 standing of it's unreality.
 Now the unreality of sin is a thing
 which has to be expressed with the ut
 most scientific care, in order that no excuse may be given for the indulgence of it. Evil which obtains in the
 bodily senses" Mrs. Eddy writes on
 page 44s of Science of Health. but which the heart condemns, has no put II evil IS unCOuQGIlIleNi,
 it is undenied and nurtured. Under such circumstances, to say that there
 is no evil, is an evil itself" Never
 theless the fact of the unreality of
 evil is the great bulWark against the surrender of evil. To admit the reality of evil is almost to face defeat. since
 that which is real can never be de- stroyed. and can only exist by reason
 of it's being attributed to principle. This claim of evil is to the average man, the biggest thing in the world. For centuries. probably ever since he has been thinking. he has made il even more powerful than good Quite com nlonly he has thought of it as more attractive than good, and, equally quite commonly, he has regarded it as thing not to be escaped from The theological systems Of the world have been built upon it's reality. and the doctrine of predestination upon it's invincibility. When, therefore Mrs, | Eddy proclaimed sin as an unreality, the theologians realized in a moment that. if this were so, the systems of centuries would be overturned. As a result Of that they put their backs to the wall, and fought for the reality of sin as. in the past, they had fought to save the world from sin. What never seemed to occur to them was that they
 were handCuffing themselves in their struggle against sin. and refusing to 1 use the key to the prison Tn Wnlcn i they were confining themselves and 1 humanity. Worse than this, they en- i deavored to save the reality of sin by making out that Christian Science en- couraged sin, just as the Pharisees of old spoke of Jesus the Christ as q wine bibber and glutton. To impute
 evil to your opponent is one of the
 oldest suggestions Of evil. and is q
 form of sin which strangely enough.
 the human mind clings to without see i ing that it hurts nobody but those who indulge their sense of hatred
 through it.
 Declaring sin to he real however