"PERFECT LOVE CASTETH OUT FEAR"

Archibald McLellan

There recently appeared in The Boston Herald, under the caption, "The Enemy—Fear," a somewhat remarkable editorial, from which we quote as follows:—

There is nothing men need fear. Fearlessness conquers the evil that was feared, annihilates it, transforms it into the classification of the has been or the never was. Fearlessness is not rashness, it is wisdom. Fear is ignorance, born of the ignorance that forges all the fetters which man has worn and chafed in since first he walked the earth. What you fear are phantasms. You make them forces by fearing them. Every four years this nation fears a presidential election. It is a foolish fear. The country has had experience enough to teach it this. It can trust the people. And yet men stand in corners and say: "We don't know what will happen." They fear what they call "uncertainty," and so create a certainty of uncertainty. They let business slacken, withhold investments, sit on the fence and wait. Is this the famous American optimism? Get courage. Work. There is nothing to fear. Don't take half-inch views. ... Shun the men who have fears. They are worse than the plague. Nothing but yourself can injure you. Nothing but the city can injure the city or the nation the nation. Fearlessness is wisdom, and the first part of wisdom is mastery of self. It is also the last part. It is the sum of life.

It is time that mortals should awaken to the seriousness of the condition to which they are self-condemned by their fears, but in order to do this they first must realize that fear is not the normal state of man. Paul said, "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." If we believe this, we must also believe that fear is an abnormity, an illusion. To think otherwise is to deny the omnipotence of God, or to enthrone Him as the king of misrule. Our salvation from fear and its results must come through the knowledge that God has "not given us the spirit of fear:" that His creation is good, and that He is governing and guiding us in all that we do.

Mrs. Eddy points the way to this salvation in Science and Health. She says, "We should master fear, instead of cultivating it" (p. 197); and she has shown Christian Scientists that this mastery is obtained only through the right living which is based upon a full recognition of God's omnipotence. Fear is no more a part of God's creation than is discord a part of harmony, or death a part of life, and it is only because mortals are prone to follow their erroneous belief in the existence of a power apart from God, divine Love, that they have become slaves to such a merciless taskmaster. John had learned what this freedom means when he wrote, "Perfect love casteth out fear;" and only through an appeal to divine Love can we avail ourselves of this promise.

Archibald McLellan.

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