Editorial March 31, 1917 Issue

"In God we trust"

William D. McCrackan

The noble motto "In God we trust," found on many coins of the United States of America, is worthy of a free people. These words, repeated also in the national anthem, "The Star Spangled Banner," set forth concisely the fundamental truth of all religion and of successful statecraft as well, implying as they do the parenthood of God and the brotherhood of man. With every advancing step in human history this motto will ring clearer and truer in the ears of humanity and correspond more closely to the actual abiding faith of the nations of the world. Christian Scientists are active citizens, loyal to God and country, ready to uphold Principle in all good works. A land of the free alone can do full justice to the above motto. If the attempt be made to filter trust in God through an autocrat, there is every reason to suspect that the particular autocrat in question will impart to this trust the hue of his own personal sense and so vitiate the direct appeal to God. Therefore a working trust in God on the part of any people implies some measure of self-government.

Writing to the Boston Globe in August, 1905, Mrs. Eddy expressed herself as follows: "I believe strictly in the Monroe doctrine, in our Constitution, and in the laws of God. While I admire the faith and friendship of our chief executive in and for all nations, my hope must still rest in God, and the Scriptural injunction,—'Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.' The Douma recently adopted in Russia is no uncertain ray of dawn" (Miscellany, p. 282).

But what of this God who is to be implicitly trusted by a whole people? Is He a national Jehovah, creating good and evil, truth and error, life and death? Here Christian Science intervenes in the affairs of nations, gives the directing signal, and explains the nature of God as trustworthy. It need hardly be insisted that the conventional ecclesiastical concept of God as changeable and capricious can no more enlist the affections or fix the trust of nations than it can of individuals. Christian Science defines God as Principle, immutable in perpetual goodness, operating through law and order, meting out justice, and inspiring righteousness. Such a God invites confidence, and upon Him a righteous nation can lean in the hour of peril.

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