In Shakespeare’s tragedy of King Lear, it was the traitorous and cruel treatment received by old Gloster from his bastard son Edmund which makes true the lines: 

    The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
    Make instruments to scourge us.

His lawful son, Edgar, was to his father ever loyal.  Now God has no bastards to turn again and rend their Maker.  The divine children are born of law and order, and Truth knows only such.

How well the Shakespearean tale agrees with the word of Scripture, in Hebrews xii. 7, 8:  “If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?  But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.”

The doubtful or spurious evidence of the senses is not to be admitted,—­especially when they testify concerning Spirit, whereof they are confessedly incompetent to speak.

Evil. But mortal mind and sin really exist!

Good. How can they exist, unless God has created them?  And how can He create anything so wholly unlike Himself and foreign to His nature?  An evil material mind, so-called, can conceive of God only as like itself, and knowing both evil and good; but a purely good and spiritual consciousness has no sense whereby to cognize evil.  Mortal mind is the opposite of immortal Mind, and sin the opposite of goodness.  I am the infinite All.  From me proceedeth all Mind, all consciousness, all individuality, all being.  My Mind is divine good, and cannot drift into evil.  To believe in minds many is to depart from the supreme sense of harmony.  Your assumptions insist that there is more than the one Mind, more than the one God; but verily I say unto you, God is All-in-all; and you can never be outside of His oneness.

Evil. I am a finite consciousness, a material individuality,—­a mind in matter, which is both evil and good.

Good. All consciousness is Mind; and Mind is God,—­an infinite, and not a finite consciousness.  This consciousness is reflected in individual consciousness, or man, whose source is infinite Mind.  There is no really finite mind, no finite consciousness.  There is no material substance, for Spirit is all that endureth, and hence is the only substance.  There is, can be, no evil mind, because Mind is God.  God and His ideas—­that is, God and the universe—­constitute all that exists.  Man, as God’s offspring, must be spiritual, perfect, eternal.

Evil. I am something separate from good or God.  I am substance.  My mind is more than matter.  In my mortal mind, matter becomes conscious, and is able to see, taste, hear, feel, smell.  Whatever matter thus affirms is mainly correct.  If you, O good, deny this, then I deny your truthfulness.  If you say that matter is unconscious, you stultify my intellect, insult my conscience, and dispute self-evident facts; for nothing can be clearer than the testimony of the five senses.