Article September 15, 1934 Issue

True Masterfulness

BURKE C. MORRISSEY

WHO does not admire and desire to express true masterfulness—confidence in good, courage, fearlessness, cheerfulness, assurance of right achievement? It is said of Siegfried, the forest hero of German legend, that the mighty deeds accomplished in his youth were brought about as a result of his complete lack of fear and consequent freedom from doubt or sense of failure.

How may one faced with the problems of modern life express genuine masterfulness in meeting and overcoming dragonlike claims of sin, poverty, disease, baseless and tormenting fears—all phases of the belief of life and substance in matter? In the life-example of Christ Jesus, the perfect Master, lies the fully satisfying answer: he met and mastered every claim of materialism, including the belief in lack and in the reality of death. To him, stilling the fury of the storm-tossed waves was as natural as stilling the self-condemnation and despair of the Magdalen and leaving her healed and exalted.

Jesus never doubted his God-given ability to utilize his knowledge in the demonstration of the power of God and the powerlessness, nothingness, of evil in any of its spurious claims. A perusal of the record of his healings, as given in the New Testament, reveals the fact that in his dealings with the claims of evil Jesus spoke with authority, firmness, and assurance. In the wilderness experience, as later, he refused to listen to the whisperings of temptation, and with powerful denial resisted them in quick dismissal. His words and example clearly show that evil will vanish before the strong resisting of its claims as darkness disappears before light.

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