Editorial January 23, 1926 Issue

The Divine Remedy

Albert F. Gilmore

Readers of the daily press are aware of the predictions of earthquakes and cataclysms which now and again are placed before the public. There is a note of inevitableness and finality about these predictions which can scarcely fail to strike dread into the hearts of those who accept them as authoritative; and as earthquakes are supposed to come from causes entirely beyond human control, the effect of such forecasting can scarcely be less than to depress mortals and to make them fearful.

Is there, then, no escape? Must such things be? These questions arise with all; and with the Christian metaphysician, who understands that all true causation is spiritual, the emphatic answer is, There is a remedy, and it is at hand! Humanity is not helpless, even in the face of the so-called irresistible forces of the elements. The divine all-power of God is not opposed or set aside by any claim of a lesser power. Omnipotence can have no opposition, no antagonist; and divine power is not manifested in destructive evil, the cataclysmic disasters which beset mankind. Not in the whirlwind, in the earthquake, nor in the fire did Elijah find God manifest, but in the "still small voice" of Truth, which reached consciousness through his spiritual alertness. In that divine messenger, the prophet found his guide, his strength, and his comfort. The belief that God uses the forces of nature as His instrumentalities is superseded and destroyed by the understanding that God is infinite good. How impossible that divine Love should use the tempest and the earthquake as means whereby to devastate the earth and destroy its people! That infinite good, divine Love, should utilize evil in order to work its divine purpose is wholly unthinkable.

Christian Scientists are profoundly grateful for the understanding that the divine All-power is never other than beneficent in its government of the universe. When denying the power of evil, Mrs. Eddy writes in "Unity of Good" (p. 52): "God is not the so-called ego of evil; for evil, as a supposition, is the father of itself,—of the material world, the flesh, and the devil. From this falsehood arise the self-destroying elements of this world, its unkind forces, its tempests, lightnings, earthquakes, poisons, rabid beasts, fatal reptiles, and mortals." Manifestly, that which has no more substantial beginning than a falsehood cannot exercise power either for good or for evil.

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