Article June 2, 1923 Issue

Safety Zones

MAYBELLE GOWENLOCK

In several cities there has been established a system of safety zones, where pedestrians may wait in safety while automobile and other traffic rushes on. The zone is bounded in some instances by heavily painted stripes on the pavement, and in others by iron chains. According to law, all vehicles must stay outside these boundaries. Should a pedestrian step outside the safety zone, he forfeits the protection of the law, and may receive injury.

A dictionary defines "safety" as "exemption from injury; freedom from danger or risk;" and "zone" is defined as "that which engirdles, encircles, surrounds, shuts in on all sides, as with an impassable barrier; goes completely around." We appreciate these material provisions for our protection, but we find that we must look to a much higher source, if we are to receive really adequate protection, the kind promised us in the Bible. The world has done its best to protect mankind from disease, contagion, accident, theft, and crime of every sort, but one needs only to scan a daily newspaper to see that something is vitally wrong with human systems of protection.

Christian Science comes to this age to show us what is wrong with the present systems. It tells us that we have failed to look to the proper source for protection, to the unfailing, ever available, ever present God; and it lovingly turns us back to our neglected Bible to learn of God and His tender, sheltering care. Let us see what assurance the Bible gives us of the truth of the above definition of safety. The ninety-first psalm has long been referred to as the psalm of safety. It opens with the promise, "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty;" and farther on we read: "Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee." To dwell in "the secret place of the most High" is to dwell in that consciousness of good which is out of reach of, or is secret to, sin and sickness. Now, a zone "encircles, surrounds, shuts in on all sides, as with an impassable barrier; goes completely around." Paul said, "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

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