Article November 13, 1943 Issue

Victory and Surrender

MARY BURT MESSER

"God requires perfection," writes Mary Baker Eddy, "but not until the battle between Spirit and flesh is fought and the victory won" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 254). This means that everyone awake to the spiritual fact of being is enlisted in a holy war. We need not be surprised or disconcerted to discover this. In God and His creation there are no conflicts, all is harmony, peace, and loveliness. Man, since he reflects his Maker, knows nothing else.

In the human consciousness, with its belief in good and evil, there are battles to be fought before we can fully possess our spiritual heritage; there are tribes of wrong thoughts to be put out before we can be established in the "land that floweth with milk and honey."

In this conflict, which is spiritually mental and uses no material armament, we are called to surrender and to victory. Life, Truth, and Love are victorious in their very nature. To identify ourselves with these is to find our immortality. Yet there is a further aspect to this discovery. It demands a letting go, a relinquishment of many things that pride has held precious. We are astonished at the new order, in its beauty, power, inspiration. At the same time much is vanishing. We are equally astonished at the shallowness of aims and pleasures that before seemed important.

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