Editorial December 7, 1918 Issue

Overcoming the Fear of Death

William P. McKenzie

At the present time death, which has been the great argument of error down the ages, is being challenged. In an extraordinary way men are being liberated, who "through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." Error plans with the lusting human mind to maintain through this fear its hold on humanity. Satan tries out every man with the vision of all the earth and its glory and honor, and says, "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." Those who trust the promise of the adversary come into the illusion of personal greatness, and losing the ability to make moral distinctions, are ready to assail the very life of those who oppose them.

With the Christian, obedience to Christ is his sanity; with the megalomaniac, fidelity to the Antichrist becomes his insanity. Darius is willing to be actually God's rival for thirty days; then the princes and captains arrange that any man who will be faithful to the living God shall be cast into the den of lions. Nebuchadnezzar puts up the golden image on the plain of Dura, and his edict runs that whoso will not deny the true God and worship the image shall be cast into the burning fiery furance. The choice seems to lie between fidelity to God and fear of the death of the body at the hands of the megalomaniac. Mortal mind says: Please Timour, or else Timour will kill you and add your skull to his pyramid. Thus it has been through fear of death that servile multitudes have been driven to commit sin at the command of one whom they fear.

But how did Jesus meet this argument of the threat of death whereby sin maintains its control over mortals? He said: "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." Mrs. Eddy says in commenting upon this statement (Science and Health, p. 196): "A careful study of this text shows that here the word soul means a false sense or material consciousness. The command was a warning to beware, not of Rome, Satan, nor of God, but of sin. Sickness, sin, and death are not concomitants of Life or Truth. No law supports them. They have no relation to God wherewith to establish their power. Sin makes its own hell, and goodness its own heaven."

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