It is recorded that after Jesus had stilled the tempest immediately "there was a great calm."

"Peace, be still," to every form of fear and strife, is the Christ decree. It is the law of dominion to everything that claims lawlessness, violence, uncontrol. It is the spiritual fact made manifest that in the realm of Mind there is no resistance, no opposition, no unrest. In conscious oneness of being, continuously expressing itself, are ordered tranquillity and perfect co-ordination. Here every thought and action is obedient to one impulse, one mandate, one purpose. Neither fear nor uncertainty enters in. On pages 19 and 20 of her Message to The Mother Church for 1902 Mary Baker Eddy writes, "Christ walketh over the wave; on the ocean of events, mounting the billow or going down into the deep, the voice of him who stilled the tempest saith, 'It is I; be not afraid.'" Men find calmness, they experience the "Peace, be still" to every presentation of evil, to every suggestion of fear, to every form of rebellion, when the "It is I" of the Christ is heard and welcomed.

The action of human will is not alone the desire and determination wherever possible to have one's own way. It is the belief that human will can be so organized in force and skill by mental and physical means as to control, to preserve or annihilate, the lives and character of men and nations. The storm upon the water was as much a manifestation of mortality's claim to be able to interfere with the harmonious universe of Spirit as was the attempt to destroy the life of Jesus on the cross. In this and every instance, his understanding of spiritual law nullified these boasted prerogatives.

Men living in a world of illusion wield violence in order to be saved from violence, destruction in order to be saved from destruction, thus plunging ever further and further into excesses and even into crimes that they may outwit or outmaster the forces they both obey and fear. Yet what is needed to silence every form of evil, to bring the "Peace, be still" to every individual life and therefore to the world, is the divine authority of spiritual understanding, the authority of the Christ, walking over the wave, stilling the tempest, passing through the midst.

When men know that everything they value and rightly possess is within them, dependent upon no hereditary or traditional power, no physical, geographical, or constitutional privilege; when they know that health, abundance, and peace are not hazardous favors, at the mercy of circumstance, of tyrannies, cruel or benevolent, where might alone is the arbiter of right and that they are preserved of God, then the conflict will cease and there will be heard the "It is I, be not afraid."

"Spirit's senses are without pain, and they are forever at peace. Nothing can hide from them the harmony of all things and the might and permanence of Truth," writes Mrs. Eddy on pages 214 and 215 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." The understanding of that might and permanence dawns in the thought of the Christian Scientist and sustains him in the face of every phase of mortal belief, amidst the violent convulsions of materiality, determined to have its anarchic way, and in the presence of sickness and sin asserting its power to interfere with the ordered health and harmony of men's lives. The calm that Christian Science bestows is not merely the result of heroism, of self-discipline and a fervent faith in ultimate victory. It is the calm which the spiritual understanding of the presence of the Christ brings to those who feel its presence and hear its call. To such amidst the outward clash and impact of events, however herculean their fury, there comes and remains that inner calm. "My peace I give unto you," said Jesus. And he who is learning to accept Mind alone as author and authority, is aware, whatever the heat and turmoil of the human conflict, whatever the aggression of its claims, that this priceless gift of the Christ is his.

In the Message as already quoted, Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 19), "The heaving surf of life's troubled sea foams itself away, and underneath is a deep-settled calm." As we look over the world's surface, we see everywhere that which is foaming itself away. Yet in alertness, in compassion, in steadfast conviction, we see also, for the frightened, the unhappy, the devastated peoples of the earth, that there is dawning the vision of a deep and settled calm which nothing can take away.

How clear, how still, how radiant in the light of Mind is its reflection, man and the universe! The struggles, the retaliations, the revenges, the ever-mounting fury of men's assaults upon each other, what insanity of belief they manifest, and therefore how inevitable their doom! Only when willingly they hear and dwell with the "I" which says to them, "Be not afraid," is fear seen not as a weapon with which to govern, to dominate, to terrorize, but as an evil which is impotent except to wreak vengeance on its possessor.

Today with us, in healing, in wisdom, in tender assurance walking over the wave and on the ocean of events, is the Christ, revealed. Unfathomable, immovable, is the calm which divine Love bestows upon its likeness, man.

Evelyn F. Heywood