Fear is a recognized detriment to health, happiness, and harmony. Nobody really wants to be afraid, and the encouraging message of Christian Science is that nobody needs to be afraid. This religion echoes the words of Christ Jesus (Matt. 14:27), "Be not afraid," and demonstrates that there is nothing to fear, for there is no power opposed to God; therefore no thing, person, or condition can harm or destroy God's creation, man, and there is nothing outside God's spiritual, safe, eternal, wholly good universe.

Fear is based on the false premise that God can sometimes be absent. But not for an instant of time or in a molecule of space can this be true.

Mrs. Eddy recognized the importance of overcoming fear. She named it as the first requisite of Christian Science treatment. She taught her students the Christianly scientific method of challenging and destroying fear. Why is it important that fear be allayed and destroyed? Because it tends to connect us with the thing we are afraid of. By breaking the chains of fear, we also break the chains of disease or limitation.

There is no incurable fear. Fear can be handled and overcome on the basis of God's allness and goodness and man's spiritual immunity from all evil. Fear of the future can be overcome with the understanding that there is never a time when God's protecting power and influence are not present.

Fear for another—for a loved one who is away or for a child considered helpless to defend himself from possible misfortunes or dangers—can be conquered when we understand that the loved one is actually God's reflection and under His eternal care. When we learn to trust those we love to the Father's wisdom and care, we find the burden of concern and human trepidation lifted from our lives.

What about fear for oneself, fear so great at times that it seems to overwhelm us? Here, again, Christian Science reassures us with the truth that in God, divine Love, there is no fear and that consequently fear has no power, no effect, no influence. "Fear never stopped being and its action," writes Mrs. Eddy in Science and Health (p. 151).

Unreality can have no effect on reality; so there is no need to fear fear. The only need is to destroy it. All depressing suggestions of mortal thought need to be persistently denied, firmly rejected, scientifically destroyed on the basis that they do not emanate from the one divine Mind and so have no influence, authority, or reality. We need to heed less and less the voice of mortal thought and more and more the voice of God, who constantly assures us (Gen. 26:24), "Fear not, for I am with thee."

A Christian Scientist once became very much frightened when the plane on which she was traveling encountered a severe blizzard and then developed engine trouble. For several moments she vainly tried to establish a sense of calm and trust within her thought. Then she glanced about at the other passengers and saw their panic-stricken faces. She felt a wave of compassion for them all and began to fill her thought with the truth that man, the idea of God, is never afraid and is never in danger, for he is indestructible, eternal.

A feeling of great peace came to her, and she found herself utterly confident and unafraid. A few moments later the engine began to function properly, and the flight was safely completed, to the grateful joy of both passengers and crew.

This experience taught the Christian Scientist a great lesson. She saw for the first time that fear always involves a personal sense of things: generally for a person, for oneself or for another. The remedy is to get rid of a finite sense of person or persons and establish the scientific sense of God and His idea, of infinite Mind and its complete manifestation. Man's eternal purpose is to express God; and when we are aware of this truth, we cannot be afraid.

Breaking the chains of fear is not a difficult or toilsome task. It can be the work of a moment, particularly if we realize that these chains are not really chains at all, but only vague, illusive images of thought with no more substance than darkness and no more reality than a lie. In "Retrospection and Introspection," Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 61): "Science saith to fear,'You are the cause of all sickness; but you are a self-constituted falsity,—you are darkness, nothingness. You are without "hope, and without God in the world." You do not exist, and have no right to exist, for "perfect Love casteth out fear."'"

Since "perfect Love casteth out fear," then each of us should endeavor to develop and express a more perfect sense of Love. Perfect Love does not hate, rather does it unself human thought and give a sweet understanding of God as ever-present infinite good. Mrs. Eddy declares in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 113), "We have nothing to fear when Love is at the helm of thought, but everything to enjoy on earth and in heaven."