The moral courage that grows from Love

I love to contemplate the life of Mary Baker Eddy. I’m so grateful for the biographies that give us a glimpse of how she studied and practiced the Christ Science that she discovered and labored tirelessly to share with humanity. One account that has been most meaningful to me is related in the Amplified Edition of Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy by Irving Tomlinson (pp. 67–69). He tells of the Independence Day in 1897 when Mrs. Eddy invited her followers to visit her at Pleasant View. One visitor was a woman who came a great distance with her two children, one of whom was suffering from a painful boil on her head. After the speaking was over, those present were able to greet Mrs. Eddy as she sat on her porch. As the woman and her children passed through the reception line and paused for a moment to exchange smiles with Mrs. Eddy, the mother had a most illuminating experience. As she told it:

I wish I could make the world know what I saw when Mrs. Eddy looked at those children. It was a revelation to me. I saw for the first time the real Mother-Love, and I knew that I did not have it. I had a strange, agonized sense of being absolutely cut off from the children. It is impossible to put into words what the uncovering of my own lack of real Mother-Love meant to me.

As I turned in the procession and walked toward the line of trees in the front of the yard, there was a bird sitting on the limb of a tree, and I saw the same love, poured out on that bird that I had seen flow from Mrs. Eddy to my children. I looked down at the grass and the flowers and there was the same Love resting on them. It is difficult for me to put into words what I saw. This Love was everywhere, like the light, but it was divine, not mere human affection.

I love that account. I’m grateful that it comes to my attention every few months, and it has illuminated for me something that Mrs. Eddy wrote: “Against the fatal beliefs that error is as real as Truth, that evil is equal in power to good if not superior, and that discord is as normal as harmony, even the hope of freedom from the bondage of sickness and sin has little inspiration to nerve endeavor. When we come to have more faith in the truth of being than we have in error, more faith in Spirit than in matter, more faith in living than in dying, more faith in God than in man, then no material suppositions can prevent us from healing the sick and destroying error” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 368 ).

Well, that mother’s experience of a deeper sense of the allness of Love, the presence of the power of God and the power of the presence of God, always serves as “inspiration to nerve my endeavor.”

One day last summer, after I had read this account again, my wife and I attended a community street fair in the town in which we live. Main Street was bustling with booths offering information about various causes, and artisans and food vendors offered their wares. Fresh from my study that afternoon, I was feeling the presence of God, expressed so beautifully in all the people. I had also studied an article titled “This World of Infinite Love” by Julia M. Johnston (The Christian Science Journal, August 1955). It brings out so beautifully that the world of Love that Jesus, John, and later Mrs. Eddy perceived to such a marked degree is available for us to see and experience as well.

I am increasingly unwilling to stand by when confronted with the appearance of inharmony, suffering, or pain.

I was really enjoying thinking in this way. But suddenly, as I was buying something to eat from a street vendor, I heard snarling on the sidewalk and looked up to see two men with large dogs on leashes. They were allowing the dogs to fight with each other, making no attempt to separate them. Without a thought I found myself calling out, “Hey, hey, cut that out!” I need to say that it has never been my practice to intervene in such matters over the years; in fact, I have always considered myself to be somewhat timid in this way. But my study of Christian Science has opened wonderful vistas to me, revealing the powerlessness of evil, man’s right to resist evil and see it dissipate, and the impersonality of evil. I’m most grateful for this growth in moral courage.

My words had the effect of breaking a hypnotic spell. I remember reading of an incident in which a snake stared intently at a bird, who began to fly in smaller and smaller circles nearer the snake, screeching all the while, until someone finally threw a rock between the snake and the bird, breaking the mesmeric pull and enabling the bird to fly away freely (see Robert Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: the Years of Trial, p. 113). The men looked at me in a surprised but suddenly mindful way and immediately pulled the dogs away from each other. I felt as if I had experienced something of what the woman in Tomlinson’s account had felt—that she could not stand to see any inharmony, any suffering, any pain, when so aware of the presence of God, divine Love. 

Two days later I walked down to serve in our Christian Science Reading Room, using the time to reflect again on God’s love and presence. As I arrived at the front of the shop, I noticed a commotion across the street. There were two groups of young men taunting and swearing at each other in close proximity. Some young women were encouraging an escalation of the conflict. The leader of one group of young men was presenting his chin to the leader of the other group of young men, obviously inviting him to strike the first blow. A crowd of people was beginning to form in anticipation of what clearly was headed to be a full-fledged fight.

Again, without conscious thought, I suddenly found myself yelling across the street, “Hey, hey, cut that out!” (That seemed to be the phrase that God had entrusted to me.) There was no response. So I headed across the street, finding a break in the traffic, and walked right into the midst of the situation. I walked up the young man who was being taunted and who had been invited to punch the other young man, put my arms on his shoulders, and said: “You don’t have to do this. No one will think any less of you if you don’t do this.” I could see in his eyes, as they met mine, that he did not want to fight. He welcomed my intervention. 

Turning, I saw the other group of young men getting into a car, and they soon drove away. That was it. The whole scene was dispelled almost instantly. I walked back across the street and served in the Reading Room with a heart full of joy. I was so grateful for these two experiences that showed me that it’s possible for the followers of Christ Jesus to become conscious of the heavenly kingdom at hand, to experience its peace and power as a present reality.

I have been most gratified to observe in my thought over many years a gradual approximation of what the woman that Tomlinson wrote of experienced in Mary Baker Eddy’s presence. I am increasingly unwilling to stand by when confronted with the appearance of inharmony, suffering, or pain without attempting to bring healing to the situation.