Article October 23, 1909 Issue

"THE WICKED THAT OPPRESS ME."

J. S. BRAITHWAITE, M. A.

So much is written about the healing work of Christian Science (and ever and anon skepticism will break out in spite of all the evidence "though one rose from the dead"), that it may be permissible to touch briefly on an aspect of it which to many carries a larger message of hope than even the promise of perfect physical health. I refer to life's great problem of how to get on with one's neighbor how to love the objectionable, how to suffer the insufferable. That Christian Science has solved and is solving these questions is best evidenced by the vista of happy faces which any gathering of Scientists presents. one notices also that there is nothing forced or unnatural about this cheerfulness of countenance, for the possessor of it wears it as one who has a right to it.

When Christianity was first taught to the world, its students were given power "over all the power of the enemy, and were told that nothing should by any means harm them. If a man believed this today, he would naturally wear a happy look, and still more so if he had observed the warning not to be triumphant on that account, but because his name was "written in heaven" satisfaction achieved. The goal for which most of us are striving is satisfaction, but we do not all agree as to the best means whereby to attain it. None of us have wholly attained to it, and many are merely hiding or trying to hide from intense dissatisfaction with themselves and the world as they find it. "As for me." said the psalmist, "I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness." Before him was the ideal true and clear, and the attainment, he saw, lay in waking up out of the imperfect and illusory personality which brought him so much trouble "the wicked that oppress me," "my deadly enemies, who compass me about," and so on.

We are all more or less oppressed by the wicked and compassed about by deadly enemies, but Mrs. Eddy has pointed out to her Followers that these same persecutors are not persons, but thoughts; a fact which, being once told one, he may prove for himself. Adherence to an ideal is a sure means of bringing about a bombardment of this kind of enemy. And the force of the bombardment varies in proportion to the purity of the ideal. Again it is not persons but thoughts, and be it remembered that "whatso ever thing from without" cannot defile; but the "evil thoughts" that come from within, they defile. The Christian Scientist is by no means exempt from this bombardment, but he is fortified by the clearness with which his ideal has been presented to him by his Leader. He cannot fail to gain courage and inspiration from the fact that his ideal, so far from harming another, must benefit all, particularly those with whom he comes in contact, if he is honest in his work.

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