Article August 20, 1904 Issue

Fear is a False Belief

L. M. S.

"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." It is very noticeable in infants that they have at first no fear. You may do anything you wish with them and they are quite unconcerned, but when the babe has grown to be three or four months old, we begin to say "He is afraid of strangers," or "He is afraid of a man with a beard," etc. Now when or where did he get that fear? Was it from God who tells us never to be afraid? No; it is only one of the phases of error which has to be denied and overcome by the truth. We can also see that it is the result of false education, for the older the child grows, and the more things he learns the more fear he has. By the time he has grown to manhood he still fears; he may have outgrown some of his early fears, only to have others, and so, unless taught better by Christian Science, he remains in bondage to one form or another of false belief.

It is said that Adam and Eve were afraid when they heard the voice of God calling to them. They really had nothing to fear, it was only their false sense that made them afraid, their fear could never have come from the call of Truth and Love. This teaches us a lesson of obedience, and shows that when we obey Truth we never have any thought of fear.

A lesson may be found in the experience of Queen Esther who saved her people by approaching the king when no one was ever allowed to come unbidden into his presence. She, however, made herself ready, and went fearlessly before the king, though unbidden, and he extended the golden scepter as a token of good-will. Then she made her supplication which he honored, because he saw that fear had not kept her from asking what was to her very dear,— the lives of her own people.

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