An Association of Nations

Political thought, commonly supposed to be divorced from metaphysics, has recently shown a tendency to realize that every step forward in human progress must of necessity be worked out inch by inch as the way unfolds, and such progress will not take place unless the preliminary work has been done strictly in accordance with Principle. This is obvious to the calm student of international politics wherever he may be, but to those who look beyond the immediate present and attempt to apply metaphysical standards, as did the Biblical leaders and prophets of old, it seems on the whole as if the time had come which was promised in the words of Paul, when he said, "Seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him: where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all." It matters not to the ultimate issue whether men pin their faith to the present League of Nations or whether they pledge their allegiance to some future "association of nations;" the motives actuating those who favor the one or the other are precisely the same, and history teems with instances of the fact that with the unfolding of spiritual truth to mankind there has been more and more evident a tendency toward bigger and ever increasing ways of expressing unity in human relations. It is no negligible thing that of the seventy-three sovereign states into which the world is divided, no fewer than fifty-one are openly leagued together for the common purpose of preserving the peace of the world and realizing to some extent the brotherhood of mankind.

The student of Christian Science does not always see how Truth, operating with remarkable promptitude when applied to his own problems, is proved equally efficacious in international relations, and yet Mary Baker Eddy, with prophetic vision which saw clearly the resistless ultimate of omnipotent good, states in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 340), that "One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations; constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the Scripture, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself; annihilates pagan and Christian idolatry,—whatever is wrong in social, civil, criminal, political, and religious codes; equalizes the sexes; annuls the curse on man, and leaves nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed."

The Christ, as Jesus showed, is ever present, and although for many hundreds of years after his time, through the Dark and Middle Ages, to the nineteenth century, the Science of Christ appeared to be concealed from the observation of the majority, it was nevertheless ever at work and influenced the course of history as only the student who takes the long view can effectively discern. Not all world organizations show the truth of this statement; on the other hand, some of them are a proof that all that is not in accord with Principle passes away, even though for a time it may appear that they have their day. Some movements destructive in tendency and so ultimately self-destroyed came to an end because they manifested the leaning of the human mind toward domination and suppression of liberty. The mighty Roman empire, for instance, began to disintegrate as soon as it began to depart from the high standards it had previously set itself, and so impressive was this spectacle of the failure of material power on a grand scale that a talented historian has taken many volumes to record it. Even before that time were the examples of the Assyrian, the Persian, and the Greek empires, and the most recent example is so fresh in memory that its full significance has not yet been measured.