Article July 27, 1929 Issue

The Lesson of Elijah in the Cave

CHARLOTTE RIEDELBAUCH

There is a great lesson that all must learn, namely, that, first and last, real power is divine. All permanent gain in the betterment of the human race may be traced to the power of divine Principle, Love. To hold thought in such relation to this divine power as to be governed by it is the greatest of human attainments, enabling one to fulfill his God-appointed mission. Much attention is given by students of Christian Science to the laying off of that element of the so-called human mind called will-power, through submission to the divine will.

We are told in the Bible that Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil, "durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee." Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, has set up many a signpost of warning and admonition against the exercise of the human will otherwise than in subjection to the divine. In a letter to The Christian Science Board of Lectureship she wrote (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 249), "When error strives to be heard above Truth, let the 'still small voice' produce God's phenomena." In her keen analysis of the human mind, Mrs. Eddy has laid bare this harmful, self-assertive human will in its myriad guises, and has shown that it must be guarded against up to the point of its extinction. On page 490 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" she exposes its nature by describing it as "an animal propensity." While a vestige of this element remains in human thought to influence action, it tends to lead into byways of error into darkness and confusion.

Though Jesus' rebuke to error was often necessarily severe and sharp, we may be sure that his words and acts were divinely impelled. In the warfare with error in ourselves and others we may not avoid the use of the sword, the two-edged sword of Spirit, which is all we are ever called upon to wield; and a deep-lying motive of love and good will to men is our only authority for wielding it.

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