Everyone knows there are often many steps to be taken between the point where one first discerns a worthy objective, and the final arrival at the point of its attainment. A youth may accept as his objective a career as a technical engineer, lawyer, a musician. But there must be a willingness, patiently and persistently, to take the intermediate steps that will, through education, bring him well fitted to his goal. Seeing the goal does not mean he has arrived there. Indeed he never will arrive if those indispensable human footsteps are not expectantly taken.

So it is with the advancement of the human race out of the wilderness of accumulated material ignorance to the goal of spiritual understanding and reality. The ideal must be envisioned and then there must be a willingness on the part of the idealist to take the intermediate steps leading thereto, however difficult some of them may be, or the goal will never be achieved.

Two outstanding qualities of Mary Baker Eddy were, first she saw the goal of human progress to be the spiritualization of the consciousness of men, whereby would come the practical demonstration of the kingdom of God on earth, wherein health, happiness, abundance, and peace are natural and perpetual. And secondly, she saw that to do this individuals and nations must be willing patiently to persist in taking the intermediate steps by the steady improvement of human government, law, and morals, as their understanding of God's universality becomes clearer and stronger. She discerningly writes: "The pious Polycarp said: 'I cannot turn at once from good to evil.' Neither do other mortals accomplish the change from error to truth at a single bound" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p.77).

In this critical period of human history there are some who are unwilling to serve their country in its armed services because they honestly believe that to do so is contrary to the teachings of Christianity. Such a viewpoint does not coincide with, neither is it supported by, the teachings of Christian Science, nor does it receive any encouragement from the Christian Science church. This church, through the columns of The Christian Science Monitor and its other periodicals, through its widely organized War Relief Committees, ministering to those suffering deeply from the ravages of war, through its provision of Wartime Ministers and Chaplains for the armed services, through the participation of many of its active members in the armed services, and through its encouragement of the purchase of government wartime bonds, is giving its unqualified support to the United Nations in their brave effort to stay the aggressor's hand and break the tyrant's sword.

Said the one whose whole life-work was to show men the way to enduring peace, "I come not to send peace, but a sword." How can this be? It can be, because, as Jesus saw, the impact of spiritual truth on material thinking brings resistance, strife, conflict in the individual and among nations. The old resists the new, and the followers of the new, seeing for a time its verity and power only in a small degree, must, if they would protect their measure of light and its fuller appearing, use the weapons at hand to thwart the Goliaths of materiality, who would, if unresisted, turn back the Saviour and delay the ultimate reign of God's peace.

The individual mortal may abhor war. He may recoil with understandable repugnancy from the thought of physical combat. But let him remember that hundreds of thousands of others—as good as he—may feel the same. It is a work we all wish might not have to be done. But it is one of those not-to-be-avoided steps toward the goal. Brave men have had to face the same issue in bygone centuries. Because they did not shirk or fail, evil's forces were thwarted. Humanity moved forward a little nearer to its goal.

Even the great Way-shower prayed, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me," but he went unhesitatingly forward, and his willingness to face the great test brought mankind ten thousand leagues nearer to its goal.

The individual who is to serve his country, in its fight to protect the God-given rights of men, should know that Mind, the sole governor of man, will make plain where his service is to be. Humility and willingness to trust his life and destiny to God, the all-wise, all-knowing Mind, who in reality makes and places all His ideas every instant, will result in his finding himself where his abilities can be best used to serve the purposes of God and man, be it as a Joseph, a David, or a Gideon. Fear, willful thinking, clinging to mere human desire to be here or there, only obscures or blocks the unfoldment of the right way. "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths."

Pacifism does not see that the interruption of the normal course of the human lives of mortals pledged to evil aggression may be a lesser evil then supinely permitting those falsely thinking mortals to interrupt and turn back the march of humanity Truthward. In the not-distant future the victors for right will be seen to have kept open the way of progress toward a fuller life for all, including the vanquished.

Christian Science stands for human progress as being God-compelled, and it stands for every necessary human footstep essential thereto. There is one thing worse than war, and that is to be faithless to our ideals, unwilling to sacrifice our human life and all, if need be, that the reign of God's law perish not from the earth. Jesus' words are as true today as when he uttered them, "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it." Willingness to give up the human is a mighty footstep toward the finding of the permanent and divine.

Paul Stark Seeley