Article April 11, 1942 Issue

Healing the Nations

JAMES A. VINCENT

The question was recently put to the writer whether it would not be more consistent with the teachings of Christian Science to direct our whole effort toward healing the nations by spiritual means alone rather than to take part in helping the democracies to carry on material warfare.

Certainly the most important work before every student of Christian Science is the healing in his own consciousness of the world's erroneous beliefs which claim to make for war. All that will end wars and make peace secure is this spiritual work, and we should be asking ourselves if we realize the greatness of our opportunity and obligation to mankind. The present is no time for indifference or unthinking optimism. The opposition to the Christ-idea has magnified itself through mental manipulation and material armament until it claims that it has power to dominate the world. It is like the great red dragon of Revelation, whose "tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven," but which "prevailed not." We know that it can never succeed; but to defeat it and avoid its mesmerism we need the pure Christ-thought of the Revelator, who saw the dragon cast out: "And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death."

On page 177 of "Miscellaneous Writings" Mary Baker Eddy writes: "Never was there a more solemn and imperious call than God makes to us all, right here, for fervent devotion and an absolute consecration to the greatest and holiest of all causes. The hour is come. The great battle of Armageddon is upon us." Farther on she asks, "What will you do about it?" And she continues, "Will you give yourselves wholly and irrevocably to the great work of establishing the truth, the gospel, and the Science which are necessary to the salvation of the world from error, sin, disease, and death?" All that opposes the Christ-idea is belief in the substantiality of matter and the power of evil. Those are the beliefs that cause wars, and those are the beliefs that would try to make us apathetic about this "greatest and holiest of all causes." Christian Science.

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