Editorial October 1, 1927 Issue

The Fiction of Fear

Albert F. Gilmore

Mrs. Eddy repeatedly states the important part played by fear as a cause of sickness, and of divers other forms of inharmony. In all her works there is no more sweeping statement of this fact than on page 61 of "Retrospection and Introspection," where she writes, "Science saith to fear, 'You are the cause of all sickness; but you are a self-constituted falsity,—you are darkness, nothingness.'" Our Leader could scarcely have put the case more strongly—fear "the cause of all sickness." Fear, then, is mankind's great enemy. This postulate, however, is based upon the supposition that fear is something and has entity. But has it? Mortal mind, so called, entertains fear as reality, but it has no seeming existence apart from this mortal belief. Moreover, since there is but one Mind, God, there are no mortal minds; hence fear's seeming abiding place disappears, vanishes. It was in contemplation of this that Mrs. Eddy could say to the belief called fear, "You are a self-constituted falsity." Thus she dismissed forever the possibility that fear could have entity, could exist as reality.

Whence arises this belief which, while wholly apart from the realities of God's creation, yet seems to play a part so important in human affairs as to cause all sickness, with its attendant miseries? What are its seeming source and power? While we are assured that because fear has no entity, it can in reality have no cause, yet because fear seems to be, the better to understand its nothingness its seeming cause may be uncovered, and thus it may be effectually destroyed. Invariably fear arises from the belief that evil is real, that it has entity and power; fear has no other basis. Then, in order to be free from fear, the necessity is to destroy belief in evil. Destruction of evil is the greatest problem facing mankind, one to which Christian Science offers complete solution. For, following strictly the word and example of Christ Jesus, Christian Science uncovers the falsity of evil, reveals its unreality, and furnishes the means whereby belief in it may be overcome.

Mortals, as a rule, are little aware of the degree to which they are the victims of fear. Believing that existence is posited in matter and dependent upon it for continuity, they look to matter as their source of strength and all well-being. But human experience teaches the uncertainty of such existence, the unreliability of material support; hence the constant fear that something untoward will befall through the changeable nature of material environment. Like all material beliefs, however, fear has its perfect antidote in the understanding of God and His perfect creation. Taking firm hold of the facts of being changes the belief in a material basis of life, with all its uncertainties, to spiritual understanding, which reveals God as Life, the only Life, and man as coexistent with God. How certainly must fear depart when this marvelous truth is grasped! Life continuous, perfect, eternal, harmonious! What more could one wish Life to be?

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