"The divine Arbiter"

Evelyn F. Heywood

Through prophetic insight the assurance came to Hosea that the Lord "will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth, and will make them to lie down safely." But with it there came an even greater and more significant assurance for God's people in these words: "And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving-kindness, and in mercies."

This betrothal, this promise that men shall be united not only in right thinking, in love and mercy to each other, but also in judgment, establishes the fact that each decision shall be that of divine Mind and not of mortal mind's jurisdiction; that men will be delivered from the enforcement of oppressive tyrannies and cruel exactions, because the only sentence to be uttered, the only decree to be formulated will be that which manifests itself through the qualities of divine Love.

It was before this tribunal of divine justice that those came who sought the Christ. And the arbitrament of Jesus with regard to what was right or wrong never varied; it never failed to set them free. It brought them, in love and in mercy, the consciousness of their oneness with the Father. "All these deeds manifested Jesus' control over the belief that matter is substance, that it can be the arbiter of life or the constructor of any form of existence," writes Mary Baker Eddy on page 369 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures."

When men are willing to place the arbitration of all seeming inconsistencies and disputes before the bar of divine justice, they will find themselves free from their sicknesses and their sins, their conflicts and enmities, national and international; they will be betrothed unto each other, even as they are unto the Lord, in loving-kindness and in mercies.

It is recorded in Matthew 11:27 that Jesus declared, "All things are delivered unto me of my Father." In this consciousness of spiritual discernment, men know, as did Jesus, that not only does judgment belong to them to arbitrate between truth and error, but also the power is theirs to banish evil and to establish righteousness. They know that they are called upon to claim, with courage and confidence, that no form of evil, however aggressive and insistent, can be the arbiter of their health, peace, and happiness.

Human arbitration may follow the lines of concession and compromise, wherein evils and injustices remain, fostering and encouraging even graver injustices. But he who steadfastly maintains the eternal fact that the arbitration of that which concerns mankind is never outside the jurisdiction of Mind, that "all things are delivered unto me of my Father," will refuse to let his faith in the triumph of justice and of mercy be disturbed.

Our Leader writes on page 277 of "Miscellaneous Writings," "Justice waits, and is used to waiting; and right wins the everlasting victory." Forever at variance, and often seeming to delay this victory, has been the value placed by the world, individual and collective, upon those things which by their very nature and purpose are outside of the arbitration of Truth, outside of mercy and loving-kindness. But the great purpose of Christianity, as seen in the life of its Founder and of those who have understood his mission, is to educate the world out of its greed and cruelty, into an understanding of those things which are delivered unto the son by the Father.

To rise, whatever the violence and relentlessness of mortal seeming, to the consciousness that nothing can ever interfere with man's relationship to God; nothing can ever separate the oneness of Principle and its idea, this is man's divine heritage. In a recognition of Spirit's allness, whereby evil is discerned as nothing, the true arbitration has begun. No longer do men judge between what they believe to be the reality of evil and the reality of good, the power of evil and the power of good. They see that all evil, since it is baseless and causeless, is also powerless; that all good is one with Principle, and therefore omnipotent, omnipresent. In this consciousness do they go forward, with the courage and joy which have their source and permanence in God, knowing that they are laying hold of the meaning of these words of Mrs. Eddy on page 30 of "Unity of Good": "When I discovered the power of Spirit to break the cords of matter, through a change in the mortal sense of things, then I discerned the last Adam as a quickening Spirit, and understood the meaning of the declaration of Holy Writ, The first shall be last,'—the living Soul shall be found a quickening Spirit; or, rather, shall reflect the Life of the divine Arbiter."

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