'the least in the kingdom of heaven.' The highest ideal
is brought close to men and declared to be within their reach, they are
called on to be 'perfect as their Father in heaven is perfect.' The
sense of alienation and distance from God which had grown upon the
pious in Israel just in proportion as they had learned to look upon Him
as no mere national divinity, but as a God of justice who would punish
Israel for its sin as certainly as Edom or Moab, is declared to be no
longer in place; and the typical form of Christian prayer points to the
abolition of the contrast between this world and the next which through
all the history of the Jews had continually been growing wider: 'As in
heaven, so on earth.' The sense of the division of man from God, as a
finite being from the Infinite, as weak and sinful from the Omnipotent
Goodness, is not indeed lost; but it can no longer overpower the
consciousness of oneness. The terms 'Son' and 'Father' at once state
the opposition and mark its limit. They show that it is not an
absolute opposition, but one which presupposes an indestructible
principle of unity, that can and must become a principle of
reconciliation." The Evolution of Religion, ii. pp. 146, 147.

But philosophers usually profess to give a quasi-logical explanation of
the existence of evil, whereas of the general fact of evil in the
world, the existence of the selfish, suffering, timorous finite
consciousness, the mind-curers, so far as I am acquainted with them,
profess to give no speculative explanation Evil is empirically there
for them as it is for everybody, but the practical point of view
predominates, and it would ill agree with the spirit of their system to
spend time in worrying over it as a "mystery" or "problem," or in
"laying to heart" the lesson of its experience, after the manner of the
Evangelicals. Don't reason about it, as Dante says, but give a glance
and pass beyond! It is Avidhya, ignorance! something merely to be
outgrown and left be hind, transcended and forgotten. Christian
Science so-called, the sect of Mrs. Eddy, is the most radical branch of
mind-cure in its dealings with evil. For it evil is simply a LIE, and
any one who mentions it is a liar. The optimistic ideal of duty
forbids us to pay it the compliment even of explicit attention. Of
course, as our next lectures will show us, this is a bad speculative
omission, but it is intimately linked with the practical merits of the
sy