By a reverse process of argument evil must be dethroned:—­

    First: God never made evil.
    Second: He knows it not.
    Third: We therefore need not fear it.

Try this process, dear inquirer, and so reach that perfect Love which “casteth out fear,” and then see if this Love does not destroy in you all hate and the sense of evil.  You will awake to the perception of God as All-in-all.  You will find yourself losing the knowledge and the operation of sin, proportionably as you realize the divine infinitude and believe that He can see nothing outside of His own focal distance.

A Colloquy

In Romans (ii. 15) we read the apostle’s description of mental processes wherein human thoughts are “the mean while accusing or else excusing one another.”  If we observe our mental processes, we shall find that we are perpetually arguing with ourselves; yet each mortal is not two personalities, but one.

In like manner good and evil talk to one another; yet they are not two but one, for evil is naught, and good only is reality.

Evil. God hath said, “Ye shall eat of every tree of the garden.”  If you do not, your intellect will be circumscribed and the evidence of your personal senses be denied.  This would antagonize individual consciousness and existence.

Good. The Lord is God.  With Him is no consciousness of evil, because there is nothing beside Him or outside of Him.  Individual consciousness in man is inseparable from good.  There is no sensible matter, no sense in matter; but there is a spiritual sense, a sense of Spirit, and this is the only consciousness belonging to true individuality, or a divine sense of being.

Evil. Why is this so?

Good. Because man is made after God’s eternal likeness, and this likeness consists in a sense of harmony and immortality, in which no evil can possibly dwell.  You may eat of the fruit of Godlikeness, but as to the fruit of ungodliness, which is opposed to Truth,—­ye shall not touch it, lest ye die.

Evil. But I would taste and know error for myself.

Good. Thou shalt not admit that error is something to know or be known, to eat or be eaten, to see or be seen, to feel or be felt.  To admit the existence of error would be to admit the truth of a lie.

Evil. But there is something besides good.  God knows that a knowledge of this something is essential to happiness and life.  A lie is as genuine as Truth, though not so legitimate a child of God.  Whatever exists must come from God, and be important to our knowledge.  Error, even, is His offspring.

Good. Whatever cometh not from the eternal Spirit, has its origin in the physical senses and material brains, called human intellect and will-power,—­alias intelligent matter.