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.

It is the story of Goliath once again. Goliath, with his overwhelming belief in his own power, with his mighty sword and spear had overawed the whole army of Saul. He did this because Saul's army accepted as valid Goliath's claim regarding himself, and therefore stood mentally on the same plane with him. It took the shepherd boy, who knew nothing about fighting, nothing about armor, but who had lived in close communion with spiritual things and believed in the power of righteousness, to show how quickly and how easily the giant of material sense could be slain by his own sword.

The Christian Scientist must choose one of two positions: he must either join the army of Saul's followers, be mesmerized into powerlessness by the Goliath of the Philistines, or he must be a David in this age and time, eschewing the material weapons of Saul, holding as of no moment the vain boastings of Goliath, unmoved by fear and prophecies of evil, and serene in the understanding that a single rightly directed thought, like the pebble from the sling, renders null and void the giant of mesmeric suggestion.

Let us keep the picture of the shepherd boy well before us. It was not by agreeing with those who believed in the validity of the claims of evil that he won his victory, but it was by simple, unswerving trust in the God who was more real to him than were all the claims of evil. He had found this God among the hills, in the open, while he lived a spontaneous, natural, honest, genuine human life. He did not find Him in the intricacies of human knowledge, false education, and materialistic learning.

The God who found His way so fully into David's heart through its simplicity, sincerity, and spiritual responsiveness, will find His way into the human heart today through the same qualities, for He is a God "with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." Is it not reasonable to suppose that, as we shake off some of the trammels of the purely formal and conventional in our thought-processes and reach with desire for the quickening spirit, we shall come into some of the simple directness of David's serene faith and express some of his spiritual power in our life-activities?

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