dwork in Life, whose only source
is Spirit. The elements which belong to the eternal All,--Life, Truth,
Love,--evil can never take away.

_Evil._ I am intelligent matter; and matter is egoistic, having its own
innate selfhood and the capacity to evolve mind. God is in matter, and
matter reproduces God. From Him come my forms, near or remote. This is my
honor, that God is my author, authority, governor, disposer. I am proud to
be in His outstretched hands, and I shirk all responsibility for myself as
evil, and for my varying manifestations.

_Good._ You mistake, O evil! God is not your authority and law. Neither is
He the author of the material changes, the _phantasma_, a belief in which
leads to such teaching as we find in the hymn-verse so often sung in
church:--

Chance and change are busy ever,
Man decays and ages move;
But His mercy waneth never,--
God is wisdom, God is love.

Now if it be true that God's power _never waneth_, how can it be also true
that _chance_ and _change_ are universal factors,--that _man decays_? Many
ordinary Christians protest against this stanza of Bowring's, and its
sentiment is foreign to Christian Science. If God be _changeless goodness_,
as sings another line of this hymn, what place has _chance_ in the divine
economy? Nay, there is in God naught fantastic. All is real, all is
serious. The phantasmagoria is a product of human dreams.

The Ego

From various friends comes inquiry as to the meaning of a word employed in
the foregoing colloquy.

There are two English words, often used as if they were synonyms, which
really have a shade of difference between them.

An _egotist_ is one who talks much of himself. _Egotism_ implies vanity and
self-conceit.

_Egoism_ is a more philosophical word, signifying a passionate love of
self, which doubts all existence except its own. An _egoist_, therefore, is
one uncertain of everything except his own existence.

Applying these distinctions to evil and God, we shall find that evil is
_egotistic_,--boastful, but fleeing like a shadow at daybreak; while God is
_egoistic_, knowing only His own all-presence, all-knowledge, all-power.

Soul

We read in the Hebrew Scriptures, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die."

What is Soul? Is it a reality within the mortal body? Who can prove that?
Anatomy has not descried nor described Soul. It was never touched by the
scalpel nor cut with the dissecting-knife. The