Editorial April 27, 1918 Issue

The Invincible Army

William P. McKenzie

A regiment was marching down a city street, its steady footfall as the tread of a giant. Then the band crashed out its finest marching tune, and for a moment the listener did not think of it as Sir Arthur Sullivan's music for "Onward, Christian Soldiers," but as if it were the rhythm for all triumphant marching. The thought naturally came of the unseen army, the great army of those who pray aright, the true Christian soldiers, in uniform or without it, in the wars or at home, who combine to make the invincible army of the Lord. Our Leader in Christian Science expresses no doubt as to right being might, but being aware that the sense of right in many minds is even as the bruised reed or as the smoking flax, she prays that God may strengthen it. "Fan Thou the flame of right with might," is the prayer (Poems, p. 30). It is those who pray for the right, and consequently work for it and fight against error in all its phases, who constitute the "Christian soldiers, marching as to war."

Many of them the great god Mars would scorn, for they are gentle mothers and loving children; yet God is continually using the agencies which the proud and the self-sufficient despise, to bring human boastfulness to its end. "God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are." Gathering unseen by those who, because they judge by the sight of the eyes, must lay their plans according to lust and self-will, there is assembling an increasing host of those who obey "the King eternal, immortal, invisible," of whom Isaiah says, "The God of the whole earth shall he be called." They are praying, "Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth." This means that an end must necessarily come to cynical self-will, even though it may seem to be enthroned in the seats of the mighty.

Many of the members of this invincible army wear the uniform of their country, and go where their duty calls upon them to be, finding no "valley of the shadow of death" to go through, because they maintain the assurance that God is Life and man cannot be separated from God. Consequently amid trials they are unafraid and give courage to their comrades. One who called himself a conscientious objector refused to enlist, because of his religion, he said, and claimed to be a Christian Scientist; but he was quickly answered, "Some of our bravest officers and men are Christian Scientists." For a man to be brave and consecrated, to be ready to lay down his material sense of life for the sake of his friends, "greater love hath no man than this." But in no sense whatever does this attitude mean the acceptance of a philosophy which glorifies

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