Editorial January 27, 1917 Issue

The Lamb and the Wolf

William D. McCrackan

It need not shock the working Christian Scientist to be told that the carnal mind will probably offer him the choice of becoming either a wolf preying upon the lambs or a good shepherd feeding his flock "in green pastures" and leading it "beside the still waters." Such an offer involves no discredit to the spiritually minded, since Jesus was similarly tempted in the wilderness by the same supposititious mind. Perhaps, indeed, it was this very temptation which permitted the Master in commissioning his disciples to say to them plainly, "Behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves;" and certainly their subsequent experiences confirmed this prediction.

Obviously Jesus had in mind certain mental states characteristic of mortals but portrayed by the lamb and the wolf, and so his language points to metaphysics rather than to the physics of the animal kingdom. From this point of view the struggle between the lamb and the wolf seems ever going on in human affairs, and is still writing the greater part of what is called the history of mankind. Saul seems always to be pursuing David; Jezebel, Elijah; the dragon, "the woman;" and Babylon is ever trying to substitute itself for the New Jerusalem. In Esop's fable the hungry wolf was determined to find a good reason for eating the lamb, and the lamb could only gasp out at last, "Any excuse will serve a tyrant." The wolf in one nation preys upon the lamb in another. The same persecution is witnessed within governments, churches, schools, and homes, within each individual consciousness,—but in the domain of spiritual warfare eventually the lamb always wins.

Mrs. Eddy makes this very plain when she states on page 567 of Science and Health: "Divine Science shows how the Lamb slays the wolf. Innocence and Truth overcome guilt and error. Ever since the foundation of the world, ever since error would establish material belief, evil has tried to slay the Lamb; but Science is able to destroy this lie, called evil." Strangely enough the lamb, which physically considered seems the most helpless of animals, typifies the strongest of spiritual states, the inoffensive innocence which loves and hates not.

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