Editorial March 9, 1946 Issue

The Joyous Task of the Elect

John Randall Dunn

Someone once asked a friend, who was a bit of a philosopher, but quite illiterate, what he understood by the phrase "status quo." The friend thought a moment, and then replied, "That just means the mess we are in!" While this is an amusing twist of the dictionary definition, nevertheless the status quo," or the existing state of things as reported by the material senses today, certainly betokens an upheaval unlovely to contemplate. In fact, did this world-wide stir not portend a wholesome turning and overturning one well might view the present-day national and international commotion with frank pessimism, if not with alarm.

But Christian Science teaches, as does Holy Writ, that a purifying agitation of unhealthy streams of thought ever presages the entrance into human consciousness of a happier sense of things. In "Miscellaneous Writings" (pp. 127, 128) Mary Baker Eddy wisely observes: "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."

Christ Jesus, he whose mission it was to save and heal mankind, he who has been known as the Prince of Peace, once made this astounding and apparently contradictory statement (Matt. 10: 34): "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." Does Truth ever bring peace to error? Does not the carnal mind, feeling disturbance and unrest at Truths approach, call out today as it did centuries ago, "Let us alone: what have we to do with thee"? Truly the revolutionary teachings of the master Christian did not then and do not now bring peace to the human mind immersed in the mesmerism of materiality.

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