Editorial January 31, 1942 Issue

For Complete and Conclusive Victory

Alfred Pittman

"The divine demand, 'Be ye therefore perfect,' is scientific, and the human footsteps leading to perfection are indispensable," Mary Baker Eddy, the beloved Leader of Christian Scientists, writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (pp. 253, 254). In accordance with this statement the Christian Scientist, far from ignoring or slighting the human tasks before him, gives them his full attention and performs them as wisely and well as he can; and this is no less true with reference to the war than to anything else. Christian Scientists are therefore found serving whole-heartedly in human ways with others who are defending and seeking the fuller establishment of justice and freedom in the world.

But what they do in such ways does not keep them from recognizing that the essential task of mankind in the war is that of annulling the mesmerism, intentional or unintentional, which would make evil seem authoritative, substantial, or real—which would make it seem capable of benefiting or injuring man, or of accomplishing anything whatsoever. The footsteps now being taken on so great a scale by the freer nations tend toward this annulment of evil, and therein is their justification. But such footsteps alone are not enough, for the reason that the actual troublemaker, as Christian Science clearly shows, is the belief that evil, something different from God, good, is powerful and real, and that it can be augmented. It is this belief that must be dealt with for complete and conclusive victory. Evil is, in fact, unreal, and cannot be made real. It is impossible in the allness of God. It is illusion, and it is dispelled scientifically by the realization of spiritual truth. Therefore along with all that Christian Scientists do humanly, and giving added inspiration to it all, is the earnest endeavor to maintain and advance in such realization.

What is the spiritual truth which one may thus helpfully know concerning those who, to human sense, are aggressors? Surely, that each one of them in his real being, little as he may seem to be so, is man in God's likeness; that he has therefore never been deluded, never been made to believe that he could profit through aggression, or that by either mental or physical means he could engage in it. What has responded to such a motive, Christian Science shows, is not man, but a false sense of man, existing only in illusory and unreal mortal mind. Man, the true selfhood of all men, is ever fully satisfied with righteousness and Love, and can be attracted by nothing unlike them. He is not drawn to hate, greed, or evil in any guise. He cannot know them. He is therefore incapable not only of persisting in evil, but of participating in it. He perfectly and ceaselessly expresses divine Life, Truth, and Love, thus manifesting Mind's immeasurable blessing for all.

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