How often do mortals find themselves facing adverse circumstances which have resulted from ignorance, fear, or sin—evil believed in and practiced! It is as if there were two real but antagonistic powers active in the experience of men—good and evil, with evil apparently often the more powerful of the two, causing sickness, suffering, unhappiness, and ultimately death.
The
accepted purpose of the education of mortals in human knowledge is so to awaken their thought that they may lay hold of true values and be able to refute the worthless and defective.
When
Joshua, the successor of Moses, undertook the leadership of the children of Israel, this reassuring message came to him from God, divine Mind: "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee withersoever thou goest.
At
the laying of the cornerstone of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, on May 21, 1894, Mary Baker Eddy used these words.
In
Jesus' parable of the good Samaritan, it is related that a man who had fallen among thieves lay half dead on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, when "by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
The
prophet Micah, foretelling the coming of the Messiah, declared that he would be "ruler in Israel," and that he would "be great unto the ends of the earth.
It
is recorded of Jesus, in the Gospel of Mark, that "when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eat with publicans and sinners, they said unto his disciples, How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners?