Editorial April 21, 1934 Issue

There Is No Fear

Violet Ker Seymer

Regardless of the general conviction that fear is a quality deeply entrenched in human thought, is tyrannical in its sway, and often successful in its assaults, Christian Science abides by the scientific fact that there exists in reality no such thing as fear. "There is no fear in love" is more than a reassuring statement: it is a scientific fact. Fear is associated solely with materiality, and there is no matter, hence no fear, in Love or Love's reflection. Ignorance of divine Love induces what is called fear and conjures up mental phantoms of disease, deformity, woebegone loneliness, and other discords. Yet all the time no fear is actually present, because divine Love is omnipresent. Belief in fear does not make it real, and thus is explained the apparent contradiction in the Psalmist's statement, "There were they in great fear, where no fear was."

Spirituality, the remedy for materiality, is the remedy for fear. "He that feareth is not made perfect in love." Hence that which most concerns us is the gain of love, since this gain leads to riddance from fear. In God, divine Principle, the infinite and only source of life, health, and intelligence, everything is harmonious and invariable, and for Love's image and likeness there is no legacy of disease or any imperfection. Declaring the omnipresence of divine Love, we are compelled by consistency to declare the absence of fear. So do we allow divine Love to dematerialize our thinking, to purify, comfort, and strengthen us, and thus "his love is perfected in us," and belief in fear, the antipode of divine Love, is cast out. Health should never be thought of as physical, for God-bestowed health is spiritual, untouched by mortal theories or laws, and forever included in man's incorruptible inheritance. One cannot conceive of anything hurtful emanating from divine Love or abiding in it.

To attempt, then, to expel fear as though it were an entity or a real quality would be futile, because fear is only a phase of ignorance of God, good, and this ignorance is in every case remediable. There is no such thing as incurable ignorance. Indeed, who would fear ignorance with Christian Science at hand to dispel it?

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