Scriptures have both a literal and a moral meaning. Which of the two is the
more important to gain,--the literal or the moral sense of the word
_devil_,--in order to cast out this devil? Evil is a quality, not an
individual.

As mortals, we need to discern the claims of evil, and to fight these
claims, not as realities, but as illusions; but Deity can have no such
warfare against Himself. Knowledge of a man's physical personality is not
sufficient to inform us as to the amount of good or evil he possesses.
Hence we cannot understand God or man, through the person of either. God is
All-in-all; but He is definite and individual, the omnipresent and
omniscient Mind; and man's individuality is God's own image and
likeness,--even the immeasurable idea of divine Mind. In the Science of
good, evil loses all place, person, and power.

According to Spinoza's philosophy God is amplification. He is in all
things, and therefore He is in evil in human thought. He is extension, of
whatever character. Also, according to Spinoza, man is an animal vegetable,
developed through the lower orders of matter and mortal mind. All these
vagaries are at variance with my system of metaphysics, which rests on God
as One and All, and denies the actual existence of both matter and evil.
According to false philosophy and scholastic theology, God is three persons
in one person. By the same token, evil is not only as real as good, but
much more real, since evil subordinates good in personality.

The claims of evil become both less and more in Christian Science, than in
human philosophies or creeds: _more_, because the evil that is hidden by
dogma and human reason is uncovered by Science; and _less_, because evil,
being thus uncovered, is found out, and exposure is nine points of
destruction. Then appears the grand verity of Christian Science: namely,