Article December 4, 1971 Issue

Let Faith, Not Fear, Manage You

HOWARD PALFREY JONES

"Disease," Mary Baker Eddy writes, "is a thing of thought manifested on the body; and fear is the procurator of the thought which causes sickness and suffering."^{Rudimental Divine Science, p. 10;} This choice of words by the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science is remarkable, and is one of the many instances of her verbal precision. In Roman times, a procurator was an official who was the governor of a territory. The first modern definition for "procurator" by Webster is, "one that manages another's affairs."

When we yield to fear, we are not only letting fear govern our thoughts, we are in fact letting fear manage our affairs. A Christian Scientist knows that fear and faith cannot exist side by side; one pushes out the other. To the extent, then, that we are letting fear, a negative and irresponsible agent, dominate our thinking, to that extent have we relinquished our hold on the faith in and understanding of God that will see us through whatever situation or problem seems to face us.

Now what exactly is fear? It is customarily thought of as anxious anticipation of danger, as foreboding about something evil that may happen in the future. So, it is a complete negative. It is not something. It is, like darkness, the absence of something—the absence of faith. Fear is not a good manager; it throws our thoughts and affairs into confusion. If what we are afraid of is a physical disability, then this confusion of thought may be manifested on the body as disease until the fear is removed by Science.

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