Article May 3, 1919 Issue

"If two of you shall agree"

PAUL A. HARSCH

Since that day when the nations "agreed to disagree" with the warring powers of Central Europe, Christian Scientists, quickly accepting a situation which was virtually forced upon them by the logic of events, have been proving their faith by their works in a field entirely new to them, that is, in the Army and Navy camps, barracks, hospitals, and even prisons. Here they have ministered first to the needs of those who were already relying upon Christian Science in all their affairs, and secondly to all those who were hearing, though sometimes but faintly, the whisperings of Truth. Thus scores of men and women, all agreeing in plan and purpose, were soon at work among the hundreds of thousands of men concentrated for training at the great camps. Here daily was distributed The Christian Science Monitor by thousands, to the great satisfaction of the Army. Here the vest pocket editions of the Bible and "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," now so familiar to every Christian Scientist, were given to large numbers of men in the service, and always without cost of them. Here to that multitude of "unprejudiced minds" mentioned by our Leader on page 570 of Science and Health, which largely made up our fighting forces, was extended that aid and comfort which constitutes Welfare and Relief work; and here, too, was performed the task of removing veritable mountains of misunderstanding, bias, and incorrect thinking about Christian Science from the minds of many of those who had been given a false concept of this religion. Here hundreds were taught to study Christian Science, to work out their own problems by metaphysical means, to know how and why to depend on God, divine, omnipotent good, under all the circumstances of war. Here also they were instructed how to hold group readings of the Lesson-Sermon, in order that whenever two or three were gathered together they might have this encouragement. In these and other ways the Christ healing was made available to all.

So it was that for at least eighteen months in trench and camp, in heat and cold, in mud and snow, on land and sea, the power of divine Mind to remove the murderous dead weight of fear and discouragement, of sickness and sin, of hate and injustice, of death and disaster, which often threatened to crush completely many a young crusader, was proved daily, and that, too, by a rapidly increasing number and in ways that to them seemed quite as miraculous as did to Peter the lifting and removal by the angels of the dead weight of prison chains that weighed him down in Herod's dungeon. As in Peter's time, when many were gathered together praying for him, so the unselfish united thought, working in support of the men in camp, field, and rest areas, greatly aided the work of the practitioners or Camp Workers, as those who did the field work were generally called. It also wonderfully strengthened the groups of two, three, or more Christian Science soldiers who here and there, scattered all over the world, were depending wholly on divine Mind for their protection and guidance. This spiritual support helped them to realize that "the everlasting arms" were indeed underneath and around and above, whether their duties called them to sow a barrage of mines across the North Sea, rush a machine gun nest, or march along a shell swept road. And what a comfort this was as they held their simple Sunday services or Wednesday evening meetings in the shadow of a gun turret on some mighty dreadnought in mid-ocean, or in a shell hole in the Argonne.

Jesus said, "If two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven." The importance of coming to the point of agreement is here made very plain; but something more is demanded besides mere passive agreement. Anything that they shall ask, the promise runs, shall be done for them. This asking, however, must not be an asking "amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts." Christian Scientists consistently endeavor through sincere striving and praying to be brought into complete agreement with the divine Mind, into the closest harmony with creative Principle, in order that this unity may constitute their only conscious existence. Animated thus with a singleness of purpose which can be the result alone of perfect understanding, of complete at-one-ment with the divine Mind, of which he recognizes himself to be the expression or offspring, a Christian Scientist proceeds to act upon the statement that if two shall agree together and shall ask, it shall be done; for did not the Master also declare, "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you"?

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