Editorial March 9, 1918 Issue

What to Do in War Times

William D. McCrackan

Was there ever a time when war was not going on? Many people may not have been aware of this, but the war germ is so subtle it operates unseen through homes, business enterprises, and governments, setting men and nations at variance with one another. This germ must be detected, dissected, arrested, and exterminated, and the present war brought to a successful termination. The searchlight of Truth turned upon war shows it to be based upon the belief in the fall of man. To reverse this mental error reveals man as unfallen, dwelling in the spiritual creation where no decay can exist. Resistance to Spirit on the part of the flesh makes war. Therefore only absolute obedience to Spirit can place humanity outside the possibility of war. But human will, making minds many, fear, and hate, wars against Spirit, hampers obedience, and resorts to elbowing, sidetracking, and backbiting, sinking finally to total depravity. Even right ideas are stolen and used as camouflage for evil purposes,—to use a war term of to-day.

Nevertheless the war germ destroys itself in the end, for destructive motives and hateful desires finally fall harmless at the feet of the righteous thinker. When the children of Israel asked for freedom from bondage, the power of Spirit was used by Moses, but the resistance of Pharaoh to this righteous demand brought war, ending in the pursuit by the Egyptians until they were lost in the Red Sea. Still the war germ continued to operate among the Israelites themselves, creating doubts and turning them away from God at different times until obedience and trustfulness returned and they entered the land of Canaan. Man unfallen obeys God, and humanity's sure defense in war times comes from living and loving this obedience, thus setting up a spiritual defense which no enemy can penetrate.

This is the time when veils are being rent asunder. The mental realm is no longer a mystery, thanks to the revelation of truth which is Christianly scientific. Hypnotism, superstition, revenge, diabolism, black art (so called), and other concoctions of the human will have exposed themselves in full view of the wise men. Those seeking high ideals need to have the handwriting on the wall interpreted to them. To-day as in Belshazzar's time the "fingers of a man's hand" writes: "God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. . . . Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting." The Belshazzar of to-day has a troubled countenance while the interpretation of the handwriting on the wall is being given, for it is written in big letters on the mental wall. All the pseudoscientific efforts of war, the engineering inventions, strategic endeavors, cannot stop the onward rush of hate unless right thinking build the wall of defense.

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