Article November 4, 1944 Issue

Self-Defense

LAURA BROWN CROWELL

Many are the weapons men have fashioned to defend themselves against aggression. Governments have equipped large armies, navies, and air fleets with all the materiel of war appertaining to them. The warfare between Truth and error has brought a contest, the proportions of which stagger human reason. No individual in the world today can isolate himself from the issues involved or blind himself to the tremendous significance of the conflict itself. While pacific nations were advocating and even practicing disarmament, aggressor nations were making the most of this opportunity to take advantage of their defenseless neighbors, even as the people of Laish, who felt themselves peaceful and secure at the moment the Danites were plotting to seize both them and their possessions, a procedure accomplished by devious design.

For a nation or an individual to advocate defenseless pacifism bespeaks an indifference to the present state of human thought. It is as a voice crying, in the words of Jeremiah, "Peace, peace; when there is no peace." What needs to be studied and analyzed is the nature of our defense. What is it? Will it stand the test when we are threatened with attack from the enemy without or the enemy within? This is a momentous question to the Christian Scientist.

The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, was neither pacifist nor isolationist. In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," she unequivocally affirms (p.29): "Christians must take up arms against error at home and abroad. They must grapple with sin in themselves and in others, and continue this warfare until they have finished their course." Here is no invitation to relaxation and ease in matter; no apathetic acceptance of evils seemingly beyond one's control. Rather, it is a trumpet call to alertness, awareness, and strength in times of trial and temptation.

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