Editorial September 17, 1932 Issue

Michael and the Dragon

Violet Ker Seymer

In revealing the supremacy of God, infinite good, Christian Science necessarily exposes the imposture called evil. Thereby it lifts the crushing burdens so long borne by mankind, burdens of needless fear, despair, disease, sin, unhappiness. With divinely guided footsteps, Mrs. Eddy threaded her way through the deep symbolism of the Bible. Quoting from the twelfth chapter of Revelation she interprets the meaning of the "dragon" as follows: "The great red dragon symbolizes a lie, — the belief that substance, life, and intelligence can be material. This dragon stands for the sum total of human error" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 563). And of Michael she says, beginning on page 566: "Michael's characteristic is spiritual strength. He leads the hosts of heaven against the power of sin, Satan, and fights the holy wars."

Christian Science initiates one into the saving art of true thinking derived from God, absolute Truth, in which there is no fear and nothing to be feared. Falsity and fear are allied, even as are spiritual fact and freedom. Then we must grasp spiritual facts in order to find human freedom, and facts are spiritual, not material. The victims of the "dragon" — materialism — are being redeemed through the hosts of strong, spiritual ideas typified by Michael.

Evil, masquerading as creative and sentient matter, is the imposture which mortals in general both worship and fear, and the result takes form in sickness, sinfulness, limitation, death. Can these material tormentors be destroyed, and mankind healed, by any material system? No, for as Christ Jesus said, "If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch." Only God, divine Truth, can lift human thought above material delusion and its consequences.

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