Editorial September 30, 1933 Issue

Message and Messengers

Violet Ker Seymer

In all ages there has been human evidence of a power for good traceable to no human source. In fact, but for this invisible, potent influence, mankind must long since have been irretrievably lost in the maze of sin and fear—materiality. When humbled and hard pressed by affliction, an individual is apt to turn yearningly to a higher power for salvation from his troubles. Job, for instance, oppressed by physical suffering and the loss of all that he had prized, when listening to Elihu must have yearned to understand the import of these words: "If there be a messenger ... an interpreter, ... to shew unto man his uprightness." Through such a messenger, interpreter of good, he could look for deliverance from the pit, for a ransom, for rejuvenation, joy, and righteousness. Through Job's sincere longing there came to him the true sense of God, and the restoration on the basis of Mind of that which he had lost sight of through faith in matter.

All the world is really yearning for the same spiritual awakening for which Job yearned, and it is at hand for all. Bewildered by its failure to eradicate fear, sin, and warfare, and discouraged by its inability to establish integrity and permanent health, humanity has grown more teachable. It is acknowledging that philanthropy, collective effort, and the exercise of intellect and human will, however well-intentioned, do not hold within themselves the means of salvation from conflicting motives and cross-purposes.

Whence then, it asks, can there be a message great enough to lift human thought out of chaos into order? This message is conveyed in the definition of Christ, given by Mrs. Eddy as follows: "Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 332). Scientifically speaking, this message of Christ, Truth, proclaiming God as All-in-all, can neither be questioned nor resisted. The widespread fruitage of Christian Science proves that "the true idea voicing good" is being heard above the clamor of the carnal mind; and this fruitage is destined to be multiplied until all the mental obstacles to human progress, all the seeming barriers of enmity and misunderstanding between the nations, have been dissolved by divine Love.

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