Article October 11, 1919 Issue

Courage

AVIS LOBDELL

Courage is defined in the dictionary as that quality of mind which meets dangers and difficulties without fear. Mrs. Eddy says, "Moral courage is the lion of the tribe of Juda,' the king of the mental realm" (Science and Health, p. 514). Without moral courage there is small progress heavenward. Its acquisition comes in ever increasing measure as the student of Christian Science glimpses the reality of perfect God, man, and universe, and realizes proportionately the unreality of the human concepts,—sin, disease, and death. Lack of moral courage means fear entertained, and to be afraid proclaims belief in evil and ascribes power elsewhere than to omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent God. The remedy for fear is understanding, spiritual knowing of God and His man. This is the great work for all time, but each thought and desire that forsakes matter as its basis and finds God, has pierced the tatters of misconception that cloak evil and has helped to destroy the seeming reality of error's favorite scarecrow—fear.

Fear presents its claims to human thought in multitudinous guises, each appearing legitimate until tested in the light of Christian Science. Without this test constantly applied, human experience is fraught with ups and downs, chance and change, fortune and misfortune, comings and goings, luck and fate, sin and sickness, and countless other equally fearful uncertainties—all apparently brought about through circumstances largely external to the individual and beyond his control. Such were the conditions into which Jesus came. Because he knew God, however, he knew that evil's claims, presented as a matter-man and universe, were unlike God and no part of His handiwork; consequently they should not be feared as realities but recognized and dealt with as illusions. He encountered every temptation that humanity is beset with to-day to believe in discordant, material sense testimony, but he did not believe evil—he knew good; and with the consummate courage born of knowing God and spiritual man's relation to Him, he fearlessly faced every possible danger and difficulty and proved them powerless to affect the harmony of man governed by Principle.

Jesus proved by his experiences in the flesh that as a man "thinketh in his heart, so is he." To walk unafraid and repeat the demonstration of the Way-shower, mankind must have the same Mind that was in him. This necessitates turning the searching light of Truth upon the human self and seeing it for what it is. Courage is needed to do this, and still more courage is needed to accept what Truth reveals and to act upon it. Nothing short of the moral courage attained through some understanding of God and the consecrated desire for the Mind of the Christ enables one to begin renouncing the human self and replacing dishonesty with honesty, lying with truthfulness, disloyalty with loyalty to Principle, selfishness with unselfishness, impatience with patience, arrogance with meekness, hatred with love, impurity with purity, ingratitude with gratitude, criticism and condemnation with righteous judgment, idleness with diligence. Thus he begins to follow the Golden Rule, to be dauntless for right, and joyously to take each step of the way that Jesus pointed out, as fast as it appears.

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