Editorial November 5, 1921 Issue

Hatred

Frederick Dixon

Lord Bryce diagnosing, in his recent speech before the Merchants' Association, in New York, the case of present discontents in Europe, ignored the usual category of superficial irritants, and, seeking a cause truly fundamental, declared, "The real disease from which Europe now suffers is hatred, the hatreds of peoples to one another." In the face of the usual glib explanation that the times are abnormal and the conditions out of joint, it is refreshing to find one statesman, at any rate, who can read the riddles in the political mirror with sufficient comprehension of realities to be aware that the occasion for all material inharmony is to be discovered in the Galatian summary of the lusts of the flesh. The apostle to the Gentiles was a profound student of metaphysics, and, in separating the fruit of the Spirit from the lusts of the flesh, enumerated quite graphically the reasons for human trouble beyond which it is quite unnecessary to seek: "Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God."

What is this kingdom of God, which the unclean thinker is debarred from inheriting? Christ Jesus, answering the question of the Pharisees, said to them, "The kingdom of God is within you." In other words, the kingdom of God is the individual's consciousness of Principle reduced to demonstration. How then can the nations enjoy peace and prosperity when they are given up to the contemplation of hatred, which is the very denial of peace, and so the enemy of prosperity? "The evil beliefs which originate in mortals are hell," Mrs. Eddy writes on page 266 of Science and Health, and this hell is exactly what many of the nations of the world are experiencing at this moment. Some day the statesmen responsible for these nations may learn that the only practical solution for their difficulties lies in an appeal to divine metaphysics. Then they will turn to Principle before they consult Blue Books, and begin to understand that prayer is not asking the Deity to restore harmony, which is never absent from the spiritual world, but consists in an effort to live so completely in accordance with Principle as to be able to demonstrate the fact that the will of God can be done on earth as it is in heaven, a phrase which Mrs. Eddy explains, on page 17 of Science and Health, in the words, "Enable us to know,—as in heaven, so on earth,—God is omnipotent, supreme."

The individual human being is, of course, only a microcosm of humanity; therefore humanity is reflected in the individual. When, consequently, a country is given up to hatred, it is because the citizens of that country have their conversations not in harmony but in discord. Now the epistolary word "conversation" is an Elizabethan word meaning citizenship. So that, if Lord Bryce is right in his definition, what is plaguing continental Europe to-day is not so much the abnormality of the rate of exchange as a widespread spasm of inharmony; not really a shortage of industrial output but a supreme fear of the power of evil. For four desperate years, evil imposed war, with all its attendant horrors, upon the world. In those days a great fear entered into the hearts of men, a fear of death in all its manifold phases, death on the battlefield and death from disease, death dealt by submarines at sea, and by bombs in their homes on land, and the aftermath of this fear is hate. Therefore is Lord Bryce's diagnosis a profound one, whether he realizes its full significance or not.

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