Article January 5, 1935 Issue

Peace an Individual Demonstration

EDWIN C. BARRINGER

INDIVIDUALS may aspire, diplomats confer, governments make treaties, and international machinery be set up to avoid war between nations, but it remains for Christian Science to present the means for obliterating this scourge of mankind, as indeed all the ills that beset it. With deep simplicity, Mary Baker Eddy declares in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 340), "One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations; constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the Scripture, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself;' annihilates pagan and Christian idolatry,—whatever is wrong in social, civil, criminal, political, and religious codes; equalizes the sexes; annuls the curse on man, and leaves nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed."

Now, whether it be waged for territorial aggrandizement, in order to subjugate a neighboring people, to revenge some fancied or other aspersion on national honor, or for some other reason, war is but the operation of the error which claims power apart from God. Its facets are fear, hate, envy, greed, jealousy, revenge; the supposition of minds many, the delusion that man is a materially independent agent; the deception that life is in matter, the fraud that matter is substance—false beliefs one and all, not to be feared, but uncovered and thereby consigned to nothingness.

Splendid and reasonable it is that in this enlightened age every right-thinking person should abhor war. Even without the penetrating insight into the machinations of mortal mind which Christian Science affords, thinkers find the erroneous nature of any resort to arms self-evident; and on this moral issue public condemnation is nearly unanimous. But high resolve or mere lip service to a lofty sentiment does not alone suffice to mature the universal yearning for peace. Here Christian Science points the practical way.

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