Article March 31, 1951 Issue

SPIRITUAL IDEAS ARE ALWAYS MOBILIZED

JOHN S. SAMMONS

The words mobilize and immobilize are much in the public thought today, and it is well that students of Christian Science give some consideration to these terms in their spiritual aspects, that they may be better prepared to affirm and realize the spiritual facts involved and the power to adjust and correct world problems inherent in the understanding and application of these facts.

In a literal sense to mobilize means to assemble and make ready resources for use and to put these resources into movement or circulation. Conversely, to immobilize would be to reverse the process, that is, to take out of circulation, to make inactive, to dissipate resources or at least make them ineffective. But, of course, in a spiritual sense such a reversal is impossible, and as Mary Baker Eddy so cogently states in her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 245), "Impossibilities never occur." That there is in human belief a persistent effort to reverse the spiritual fact, however, no one can truly deny.

Students of latter-day history have been increasingly aware of what claims to be a highly organized, well-planned, and carefully executed movement, first to neutralize, then ultimately to destroy, the teachings and objectives of Christianity and those forms of government that foster and nurture best those teachings and objectives. The methods used are sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle, sometimes secret, and sometimes well publicized. But be the methods open or secret, the objective is the same: to negative good, to promote a ready indifference toward and an easy tolerance of the destructive elements in human nature. This barrage of negative argument is designed to break down morale, to confuse, obscure, or dissipate mental resources; that is, to immobilize the thinker. But again we read, on page 234 of the textbook, that "evil thoughts and aims reach no farther and do no more harm than one's belief permits."

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