Article December 4, 1915 Issue

Standing with David

LEWIS C. STRANG

In answer to their anxious queries regarding his second coming and the end of the world, Jesus once said to his disciples, "When ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be." He apparently regarded these conditions as evidence of a great upheaval in mortal consciousness, and his disciples were not to be disturbed by them, because they were but the indications of the end of such things. He intimated that rightly viewed they were the forerunners of a better sense of things, the ushering in of a higher plane of human consciousness, a nearer approach to the ideal.

Jesus' statement finds its modern expression in Mrs. Eddy's remarkable prophecy and promise on page 96 of Science and Health, which is being fulfilled today: "This material world is even now becoming the arena for conflicting forces. On one side there will be discord and dismay; on the other side there will be Science and peace. . . . These disturbances will continue until the end of error, when all discord will be swallowed up in spiritual Truth."

It is markedly true today that the Christian Scientist, looking aghast at mortal sense-testimony, must say with Jesus, "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." That is, neither in the gross materialism of human will nor in the captivating ideals of human good can the spiritualized thought find rest and peace. It is forced by the necessities of its own nature into that pure idealism of Spirit which declares that impersonal good, impersonal Love, impersonal Principle, alone has reality and truth. It is of little consequence what form the threat of materialism may take, whether of political, religious, or medical despotism; if one permits himself to look upon the threat with the same eyes as do those who believe in the reality of the threat, he too will believe as they believe, will be awed as they are awed, and will surrender his God-given dominion over the lie material as they have surrendered it.

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