Most readers whose attention is arrested by the above caption will recall that strangely stimulating story, "Through the Looking Glass," written by Lewis Carroll half a century or more ago. They will recollect the dialogue therein between Alice and the White Queen, in which Alice argues that one cannot believe impossible things; whereupon the Queen boasts that sometimes she has believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Doubtless many a person, without special claim to cleverness, has surpassed the Queen in this line of endeavor, because the capacity of mortals to believe the impossible is prodigious. Out of that unexplainable perversity come their confusion, their limitation, their mortality itself. For example, what mortal does not believe in evil? Yet to pure intelligence, evil is an impossible conception. Divine Mind, God, certainly cannot conceive evil or behold it. Nor can man in His image know evil or be tempted by it. Indeed the thing is nonexistent. Bold assertions are these, admittedly, but the truth is famous for effrontery.

Here Mary Baker Eddy, who brought Christian Science into the world, affirms with her usual searching insight and commanding courage, "To get rid of sin through Science, is to divest sin of any supposed mind or reality, and never to admit that sin can have intelligence or power, pain or pleasure" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 339).

To the average human being, not a few forms of evil already are unthinkable. He has no thought of indulging them himself or of attributing them to friends and associates. The earnest Christian Scientist is on the way to the rejection of evil in all its ramifications. It is one of the impossible things he cannot believe.

Now we should be in a position to challenge disease triumphantly, since disease, after all, is an acute form of evil and therefore must yield to the same logic and truth which puts evil in the category of impossibilities. Face the symptoms of disease fearlessly. Trace them back to their origin. Fortified with a modest understanding of Christian Science, you will discover that they have no origin, no beginning, no presence. Having looked them out of countenance, you will become aware of health and dominion in their place. Then you may recall Mrs. Eddy's heartening assurance (ibid., p. 419), "Neither disease itself, sin, nor fear has the power to cause disease or a relapse."

People in all ages have been much given to searching for the cause of disease and the origin of evil—an unprofitable and perilous adventure because it starts out on the assumption that these impostors are real and permanent. Quite naturally investigators return from their quest more helpless and confused than before. Evil and disease deserve no explanation. Rather do they deserve to be explained away; and Christian Science is doing it.

Unfortunately multitudes, in line with the practice of the Queen, continue to believe in these impossible conditions, and in so doing come under their mesmeric sway. Whereas an acknowledgment of the truth that Life, the Life of every individual, is insurmountable and unquenchable, will dissipate the mesmerism of suffering and infirmity. Let everyone who desires to feel more of the divine energy recognize this fact. Better still, let him know it. Christian Science opens the way to that happy achievement.

There are those, not many or influential let us hope, who believe that the ruthless aggression now on foot in the world can put out the light of democracy and Christianity. They are choosing to believe an impossible event. The reasoning individual shrinks back from such mental pictures. He cannot admit that the labor of the centuries can come at last to nought. He holds to the unshakable conviction that the one wise God will not permit an outcome so vain and deplorable.

No sane individual desires such a catastrophe, of course; but people, in the confusion and stress of the time, sometimes evince so little courage and faith and discernment that they surrender to fatalistic apprehensions and invite the very condition they dread. The cause of the democracies demands firm support, in thought and in deed, from every exponent of liberty. A hundred years ago Arthur Clough wrote:

Surely God will not forsake the civilization He has encouraged men to build. He will not let down His people who are struggling to maintain it, "for with God nothing shall be impossible." History is full of attempts to overthrow liberty, but liberty persists and will continue to persist, because it is inextricably fixed in Principle. It cannot be laid low. No, the loss of freedom is one more impossible conception. The divine Mind cannot conceive it. The enlightened individual cannot fear the extinction of so precious an institution. He is alert and energetic to avert the threatened calamity. Nations made up of men and women of such determination possess an unseen vitality which makes them invincible.

Three outstanding impossible beliefs have we considered—disease, evil, defeat in righteousness. What further ones are we harboring? Occasional self-examination may bring to light unsuspected fallacies. In their aggregate they make up the dream of mortal existence. Locate and eradicate them one by one. Then will mortality and defeatism be swallowed up of life and victory.

Peter V. Ross