Editorial May 4, 1907 Issue

"TO DAY IF YE WILL HEAR HIS VOICE"

Annie M. Knott

The great peace gathering in New York City has passed into history, though its voice will echo down the corridors of time until the din of war and of all strife is forever hushed. Whatever may have been accomplished on this occasion, the important factor in the peace movement is the spirit which gave it birth, and which impelled some noble men and women at great cost to themselves to make strenuous efforts to save the world from the age-long miseries of war. Among civilized nations there are few if any who now contend for wholesale slaughter as a means of settling national or international questions, though many are slow to see that the time is ripe for the establishment of saner methods. It should be clear to all that to right belongs all time—that the time for wrong is never! While it is true that the highest good cannot be humanly expressed so long as men are ignorant of God and His law, it is also true that evil has no right to exist; therefore, when the belief in the necessity of evil is given up, the power and permanence of right will be recognized.

Nearly two thousands years ago Christianity was ushered in with an angelic chorus announcing peace and good will, and when the child Jesus was taken into the temple, Simeon the seer declared that he had come "to guide our feet into the way of peace." Toward the close of Jesus' earthly career, when pursued by the hatred of his unrelenting foes. even when menaced by the cross, he said to his followers, "My peace I give unto you;" and it was not the peace of an ignoble concession to error, it was no truce with the belief in sin, disease, or death. No! the war with error must continue till its every phase should be subdued, but in this decisive struggle only evil was to be destroyed; men were not to lose their lives in the victories of Truth, but to find them. Thus we find Paul, the great Christian warrior, declaring that "to be spiritually minded is life and peace:" and again, "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace."

It is now admitted that the cause of international peace has made more progress in the last ten years than in a thousand years before this time. Is it not. therefore, a just conclusion that spiritual mindedness is gaining ground. No one can deny that war is always waged for material considerations, and when these are made to give place to what the great Teacher called "the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith." the reign of righteousness and of peace will have begun. It is right that we should honor those whose efforts are bringing nearer this blessed consummation, and Christian Scientists everywhere rejoice that their beloved Leader's name is enrolled among the names of those who are the founders of the peace movement. For forty years she has labored incessantly to awaken her fellow-men to the great truths of spiritual being. She has never ceased to declare that all good is now, and attainable now by all who love God, good! This great truth has been proved to a wonderful degree by thousands who have been healed in Christian Science, and they hail with joy the signs of a new order of things—Divine Science correcting all the errors of mortal sense, so that we may confidently look for the speedy realization of the poet's prophecy:—

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