Editorial July 8, 1944 Issue

Israel Again Comes Out of Egypt

JOHN RANDALL DUNN

"The time is out of joint." Shakespeare's pithy line which he puts in the mouth of Hamlet describes such moments as those in which the human family finds itself today. Are we not seeing at this hour a fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophecy of the coming of a time of mighty upheaval? The voice of the Lord God spake thus to the prophet: "I will overturn, overturn, overturn, it ... until he come whose right it is." Now of course a period of undue stir and stress is not sought after, per se. For instance, what man can enjoy his customary peace and quiet with the house topsy-turvy from spring cleaning? Yet all this is wholesome and essential, if one would live in cleanliness and order. Of the need of frequent mental housecleaning, our wise Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, has written (Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 127, 128), "The human heart, like a feather bed, needs often to be stirred, sometimes roughly, and given a variety of turns, else it grows hard and uncomfortable whereon to repose."

The sad part about some overturning is that an individual, through ignorance of Truth and its normal, purifying activity, may view the commotion as calamitous instead of salutary. To be sure, a storm at sea may prove an unhappy problem for a skipper who knows not how to handle his craft; but to a seasoned sailor the experience can become an opportunity to prove his seamanship, his dominion over adversity, and leave him wiser and stronger for the testing time.

In these tempestuous days, the teachings of Christian Science are proving a boon beyond evaluation. This Science reveals and explains the effect on the human mind of Truth's appearance and activity, and thereby dissipates much of the fear and mystery in connection therewith. Mrs. Eddy writes in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 168): "Here let a word be noticed which will be better understood hereafter,—chemicalization. By chemicalization I mean the process which mortal mind and body undergo in the change of belief from a material to a spiritual basis." And again (ibid., p. 96): "The breaking up of material beliefs may seem to be famine and pestilence, want and woe, sin, sickness, and death, which assume new phases until their nothingness appears. These disturbances will continue until the end of error, when all discord will be swallowed up in spiritual Truth."