Editorial March 7, 1942 Issue

"Proofs of God's care"

Evelyn F. Heywood

The proof of God's care does not lie in the mere possession of human ease, physical health, and prosperity, though mortal mind would fain have us so believe. Mary Baker Eddy throws startling light upon one of the proofs of God's care when she writes (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 66), "Trials are proofs of God's care." The earnest student of Christian Science often ponders this statement, which he may at first have felt to be at variance with the theme everywhere present in Mrs. Eddy's writings, that divine Love bestows only good upon its offspring, and that all evil is the result of erroneous concepts.

The tendency of scholastic theology has been to magnify suffering by endowing it with a certain dignity and value of itself, as emanating from and directed by God. Christian Science does not do this. It teaches that the only purpose of suffering—never imposed by God, but self-afflictive, the result of ignorance and fear or deliberate infringement of God's laws—is to awaken men to spiritual reality, wherein is no sin or suffering. The student who suffers as the result of error, and is willing to leave it behind, does not dwell with the mistakes, or his own part in them, longer than to learn his lesson from them and intelligently guard himself against their repetition. He who spends his time in self-pity or resentment, does not learn. No one will find the "proofs of God's care" who is engaged in contemplation of evil, in thoughts of fear, and in the bemoaning of his fate. In every experience, however humanly grievous it may at first appear to be, there is the immediate, valiant, resolute call to prove that the presence and power of Love are equal, indeed superior, to every mortal problem in which the acceptance of mortality has involved the human race.

At the greatest trial of all history, when Jesus stood before a judge in whose hands appeared to rest the decision as to whether he should live or die, Pilate said to him, "Knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee?" The most momentous trial, and also the most dramatic in its proof of God's care, to the world! "Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above," replied Jesus. He who bases and maintains his consciousness of power where Jesus did, will find the means of annulling evil and establishing good. He will find progressive evidence of God's care. Thus will each trial be seen, not as something to be submitted to, dreaded, or if possible evaded, but to be met with serenity and confidence. On page 276 of "Miscellaneous Writings" our Leader writes: "Out of the gloom comes the glory of our Lord, and His divine Love is found in affliction. When a false sense suffers, the true sense comes out, and the bridegroom appears. We are then wedded to a purer, higher affection and ideal."

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