Editorial August 7, 1926 Issue

Overcoming the Error of Fear

Duncan Sinclair

Mrs. Eddy indicates the seeming cause of fear when she writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 532), "Fear was the first manifestation of the error of material sense." Material sense, then, that archenemy of the human race, is the source of fear, fear which holds mankind in thralldom. In exposing erroneous material sense and showing that its first manifestation was fear, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science has done inestimable service to mankind; for thus is the way opened up for the overcoming of material sense and its resultant, fear.

How important it is that fear should be destroyed becomes evident when the fact is recognized that it is responsible for an immense amount of human suffering, many a case of acute distress being directly traceable to it. Our Leader goes the length of saying on pages 391 and 392 of Science and Health that "fear is the fountain of sickness;" but she proceeds forthwith to state how it may be mastered and disease overcome, in the words, "and you master fear and sin through divine Mind; hence it is through divine Mind that you overcome disease."

It is "through divine Mind," then, that fear and its progeny must be destroyed. What, more particularly, does this mean? Those who know nothing about Christian Science may ask the question; but the veriest beginner in this Science already has more than an inkling of its meaning, especially if he has experienced a healing through its teachings. For the moment one commences the study of Christian Science he begins to know something of the truth about God—the truth that God is divine Mind. So that the destruction of fear takes place through the gaining of an understanding of God, or through spiritual understanding, material sense (so called) being overcome by this understanding. This has happened time and again in the experience of the Christian Scientist. And when one has had it proved to him, not once but possibly many times, that as he brings his understanding of God, divine Mind, to bear on the material beliefs which are responsible for his fear, exposing the unreality of these beliefs, and finds the sickness vanishing which had resulted from his erroneous thinking, he no longer doubts, but rejoices exceedingly in the truth which Christian Science has brought to him as a great revelation.

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