CHRISTIAN SCIENTISTS IN A CROWD

REV. JESSE L. FONDA.

It has been remarked by those whose business it is to manage people in masses that Christian Scientists are easy to handle in a crowd. The policemen intimated this in the recent concourse in Boston, as did the railroad men in the trip to Concord in 1903. This is simply the result of scientific teaching. Christian Science teaches that we should be governed by spiritual purpose, understanding, and judgment. Hence Christian Scientists cannot be stampeded; that is, swayed by a sudden impulse, feeling, or surprise.

When a lot of people are thrown together a mental unity is formed among them. A common purpose brought them there and a common expectation holds them. But a sudden surprise of some kind may be sprung upon them, and then the danger is that their excited feelings will carry them off their balance and they become uncontrollable for the time being. When, however, the serious purpose of Christian Science is in their thought, to maintain its natural command over the human impulses, they cannot easily become excited and bewildered; their scientific poise cannot readily be broken. The common discipline of scientific healing enables them to hold themselves always in hand and to meet seemingly startling conditions calmly.

Christian Scientists are forewarned and forearmed against fear in any form. The sense of divine protection and of the infinite kingdom is so strong within them that they never get frantic or lose control of themselves. Fright is impossible to Spirit or the spiritual. Further, Scientists have a sense of the initiative in a degree unusual to people in general; that is, they see what ought to be done and are ready at once to do it. When the Scientists went to Concord in 1903 they had a good sense of what was to be done and promptly adjusted themselves to the situation. In the assembly at the late dedication in Boston, the problems of steam-car and street-car transportation, public accommodation and private entertainment were easily solved, because each individual had the initiative and quickly perceived the plan of the arrangements and quietly followed the prescribed order.

Then, again, Scientists always have a generous thought, and that is an immense help in a time of stress. They are not suspicious that any one will take any good from them, or that they can in any wise lose the good that is for them. They expect good, joy, and abundance surely, and so are helpful, yielding to others, esteeming "others better than themselves;" and thus get the larger blessing. This puts a very pleasing tone into a crowd. All this can be summed up in the term "scientific thought." The unity that it produces and the kindness it diffuses are among the noticeable traits which must ever characterize true Christian Scientists.

I am of the opinion that the expression by which God is said to be "All in all," means that He is "All" in each individual person. Now He will be "All" in each individual in this way: when all that rational understanding, cleansed from the dregs of every sort of vice, and with every cloud of wickedness swept away, can either feel, or understand, or think, will be wholly God; and when it will no longer behold or retain anything else than God, but when God will be the measure and standard of all its movements; and thus God will be "All," for there will no longer be any distinction of good and evil, seeing evil nowhere exists; for God is all things, and to Him no evil is near: nor will there be any longer a desire to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, on the part of him who is always in the possession of good, and to whom God is All. The last enemy, moreover, who is called death, is said on this account to be destroyed, that there may not be anything of a mournful kind when death does not exist, nor anything that is adverse, when there is no enemy.

ORIGEN (about A.D. 225).

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