Article August 24, 1912 Issue

DISPELLING EVIL

BLANCHE HERSEY HOGUE.

Meteorologists were somewhat interested at one time, it is said, in a possible device for dispelling tornadoes—something to establish a counteraction and prevent or scatter the approaching storm. Could such a thing be accomplished, it would well illustrate the relation of Christian Science teaching and treatment to the mental storms of humanity; for this Science brings to light the need for intelligently employing prayer to dispel all manifestations of evil, and it establishes the sure method by which this may be done. In Science and Health (p. 332) we read of the Christ-idea "speaking to the human consciousness. ... dispelling the illusions of the senses; ... healing the sick and casting out evils, destroying sin, disease, and death."

The nature of Christian Science treatment makes it inevitably a destroyer of evil; for this treatment is prayer based upon the omnipotence and omnipresence of God, and it reckons with good only as the fact of creation. The thoughts embodied therein are divine in origin; whatever is human, personal, or material is properly no part of the treatment. Right prayer is inspired by the divine Mind, inasmuch as such prayer is the declaration of the almighty and invincible presence of God. It comes in answer to that outreaching right desire which opens the way to the intelligent and satisfying contemplation of God and His works as they really are.

Right desire leads to enlightened prayer. The longing for good may seem to have origin in our human thinking, even though it is really the result of divine penetration into the human heart. The actual realization of the supreme power of good, however, untainted by any fear or doubt or sin, cannot even seem to spring from anything less exalted than the divine Mind itself. True prayer is the light shining in darkness; it is the light, pure in source and nature, that performs its holy office in extinguishing darkness. Only thoughts wholly spiritual and entirely foreign to matter and to everything involved in matter, thoughts supplied by God Himself to man, can have any place in perfect prayer. So the Christian Science treatment that is equipped for the destruction of evil is no human invention. It is God's thought reflected in human thought-processes, and it unfolds to care for and provide for our present needs when pure revelation governs reason to the logical undoing of every statement of sin and disease.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN