Editorial April 11, 1953 Issue

"THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES"

Helen Wood Bauman

The celestial bodies have seemed to hold a fascination for mankind from ancient times, perhaps because of their remoteness, their mystery, and their symbolism of steadfastness and pattern. Deborah, rejoicing in the Lord's avenging of Israel, sang (Judg. 5:20), "The stars in their courses fought against Sisera." Today countless thousands still believe that the stars in their courses and the planets accompanying them have power to produce benevolent or malignant influences on the lives of individuals and upon the unfoldment of human events. Superstition may seem to act as law until it is uncovered and destroyed by the truth. For that reason it needs definite denial.

Christian Science disclaims superstition at every point. It disproves all fatalism and shows mankind how to work out the problem of being through the demonstration of divine law. This process of proving that God is the sole governor of man requires spiritual effort, and it may not appeal to the spiritually indolent, who find it easier to succumb to a fixed fate than to demonstrate a fixed Principle. But all must come to prove man's perfection as God's image and God's government of His universe, because these spiritual facts of being are inescapable. The understanding that God is one Mind and that the spiritual universe, including the celestial bodies, is actually Mind's idea destroys any supposed power that hoary superstition may claim to generate. Mary Baker Eddy plainly states (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 102), "The planets have no more power over man than over his Maker, since God governs the universe; but man, reflecting God's power, has dominion over all the earth and its hosts."

To believe that unintelligent, unconscious masses of gaseous or solid matter have the ability to determine one's destiny is a far cry from the fact that the one infinite and loving Father consciously outlines with intelligence and goodness of purpose the identities He creates. Nothing can shape one's destiny but divine Mind; the truth of destiny is the demonstrable fact that good is unfolding eternally through the ideas of Mind. This truth leaves no place for a destiny of sickness, disaster, accident, poverty, sin, or death. It reveals man perpetually under the care of the Father, whose will no material circumstance, no evil personality, no false law, can contravene.

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