Christian Soldiers

[Written Especially for Children]

BARBARA D. WILSON

"Onward, Christian soldiers,
Marching as to war."

So go the first two lines of a hymn which Sunday school children love to sing! Have we thought of what it means to be a Christian soldier? Certainly that is something we ought to think about; for every Christian Scientist, including the smallest child in the Sunday school, is a soldier.

Our dear Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 450), "The Christian Scientist has enlisted to lessen evil, disease, and death; and he will overcom them by understanding their nothingness and the allness of God, or good." That means that, because we are Christian Scientists, we are joining in the fight against evil.

The enemy is not person. It is just error, a lie, a false belief. How do we fight this enemy? With guns? With a sword? Oh, no! We fight it by understanding that it is nothing. The reason it is nothing is that God is All. Since God is All and God is good, there is no place for error.

One thing each soldier must have, for without it he cannot be a good soldier. What is this very important thing? It is obedience. Each soldier must be obedient. He must listen carefully to his captain's orders and carry them out faithfully.

Each Christian soldier must listen carefully for God's orders. They come to us as good thoughts, telling us to be loving and gentle and kind to others. Sometimes they come through our fathers or our mothers, who guide us as God shows them how. Whenever these orders come to us, or however they come, they are sent to make us happier and more like God. So we must obey them faithfully and gladly.

When we are obedient to Truth we are being good, for we are reflecting God, who is all good. So when error comes to us, we can fight it and win the fight, because we are obeying God's orders.

Besides being obedient, a good soldier is brave. It should not be hard for a Christian soldier to be brave, because he knows all the time that the enemy, error, is just a lie—not real at all.

Once there was a very good man who was rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem. He was obedient to God, and worked faithfully. There were enemies who did not want the wall to be rebuilt. These enemies tried in every way to make him stop working. But they could not keep him from being obedient. Four times they sent messengers to him, asking him to meet them in a certain village.

But Nehemiah, for that was the man's name, answered, "I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you?"

Now when we are obeying God's orders and demonstrating good, error would try to stop us if it could. It may send the messenger of fear to us, saying: Come down from those thoughts of good and think about error! Think how real it is! Then, like Nehemiah, we must be brave and loyal, and answer, I am doing God's work, and why should I leave it and listen to error?

When we speak to error in that way, we expect it to disappear; for our Leader says in that same beautiful book, Science and Health (p. 406), "Resist evil—error of every sort—and it will flee from you;" and again, on page 368, "Error is a coward before Truth."

So, then, when we are brave and obedient and loyal, we are being true Christian soldiers. We may say, as Paul did, "I have fought a good fight, . . . I have kept the faith."

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Christian Soldiers

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