Editorial May 19, 1917 Issue

Good Omnipotent and Eternal

Archibald McLellan

Evil's persistent effort at this particular time seems to be so to engross Christian Scientists in war news and war preparations as to render them perfunctory in their scientific study and work. Needless to say, most Christian Scientists are alert to this subtle effort, and they have better prepared themselves to understand the meaning and value of war news, and are better able to do whatever falls to them to do in the way of material preparation for meeting the conditions consequent upon war, by bringing to bear upon the situation a clear sense of that divine Science which, "rising above physical theories, excludes matter, resolves things into thoughts, and replaces the objects of material sense with spiritual ideas" (Science and Health, p. 123). Following this course, the line of demarcation between seeming and being is sharply drawn, and thus Christian Scientists have become able to differentiate between those things which are tending toward the perpetuation of self-will, bondage, and fear and those things which, though in a crude way, are working toward the accomplishment of the better beliefs of human good and human liberty.

In dealing with many of these conditions the choice which Christian Scientists will be compelled to make will call for the more careful consideration because it is along new and different lines. "Of two evils choose the lesser," runs the adage, and in this instance the choice will not be between good and evil, but between a lesser and a greater evil; in other words, between that which though inherently wrong has an ennobling purpose—the freedom and uplift of all peoples—and that which while likewise inherently wrong has for its ultimate purpose the subservience of the masses to the self-appointed few, domination not by right but by might, the unlicensed rule of autocracy against the democracy which, reared on liberty, raises itself to undreamed of hights of achievement and attainment.

"Where there is no vision, the people perish," said the wise man, and those who have the vision to see the good of the mass as above that of the individual will be able to make this choice intelligently and understandingly and with a due recognition of the necessity which confronts them. Not only this, but they will also be mindful of the fact that even though the world's progress has ever been along slow and unsatisfactory lines because of its unbelief, yet it is progressing Spiritward. "This leaven of Truth is ever at work," Mrs. Eddy writes on page 118 of Science and Health; and she says further that this will continue "until the leaven of Spirit changes the whole of mortal thought, as yeast changes the chemical properties of meal." Christian Scientists have as their duty, therefore, the leavening of the most material beliefs of mankind with those which are in some measure at least more spiritual. To do this effectively they must make it their supreme endeavor to understand God.

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