Editorial October 24, 1959 Issue

THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER

Helen Wood Bauman

The struggle of mortals for power is an old story. Men and nations have fought to impose their wills upon their fellow men, finding strange satisfaction in tyranny that crushes out individual and national freedom and development. Few mortals could be considered entirely guiltless on this score. Wherever spirituality is least developed, human will is most active in the effort to dominate thought. For will power, according to Christian Science, is an animal propensity, far removed from spirituality, which bows in Christly meekness to God's government of all.

Christ Jesus taught that power belongs to God alone and that genuine spirituality can be utilized to prove the unreality of all displays of evil power: despotism, false law, sin, disease, death. Through his Christliness, or spiritual perfection, Jesus demonstrated God's supremacy over every material claim to authority that confronted him. Matter and its laws were trampled underfoot in the presence of his understanding of divine law. The diseases and sins and other limitations of mortals disappeared because the Master knew that power belongs to good. Neither Pharisees nor Romans could prevent his expressing God's control of his life.

Jesus attempted to dominate no individual, but always brought to light God's universal government. Error struggled to thwart the Master's mission, but its struggling ceased before his realization that a divine commission unfolds resistlessly. He introduced the spiritual era, which demands even more than moral responsibility: his doctrine called for the proof of God's fatherhood and of man's absolute perfection as His son, the reduction of evil to a liar and a lie, and evidence of the eternal dominion of Spirit. The harmony which Jesus demonstrated showed his doctrine to be divine.

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