Mrs. Eddy shows throughout her writings on Christian Science the importance of handling fear if we would overcome disease. In her book "Retrospection and Introspection" (p. 61) she sets forth a perfect treatment for the handling of every phase of fear, thus enabling us to overcome the argument of disease. She says: "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."'"

Christian Science demonstrates that the destruction of fear in the thought of the patient results in the healing of both functional and organic disease. He, therefore, who would apply and prove the rules of Christian Science in the healing of disease must begin his work by handling thoroughly the belief of fear. As one affirms Mrs. Eddy's statement that fear does not exist, one becomes more and more convinced of its truth, because he realizes that, since God is All-in-all, that which does not exist in God has no actual existence; that because there is nothing besides God, fear cannot exist aside from or outside of Him; that fear, being without cause, is also without effect; being without a creator, it has no source or origin in which to originate or from which to emanate, and, being without mind to think it, it therefore never was thought. Recognizing fear to be nonexistent, the Christian Scientist knows that it does not abide in time, place, or space, and that it is never a part of the real man's consciousness. Thus he can resist the temptation to believe that he is afraid, and can effectively eject the false sense testimony seemingly projected into his experience by the machinations of fear.

According to the teachings of Christian Science, disease is largely the result of fear, and the physical evidence of disease, regardless of its type or form, is fear seen and felt as a so-called bodily manifestation. The only conclusion possible, therefore, is that both fear and disease are mental, and, being mental, need mental not physical methods to destroy them. Consequently, the demonstrator of Christian Science will not lose sight of the fact that Christian Science is the Science of Mind-healing, not matter healing. He will not attempt to handle disease as physical and fear as mental, but will handle both on the basis of their nothingness, their nonexistence.

The further portion of Mrs. Eddy's statement that fear has "no right to exist." is in exact accord with truth, for to be "right" fear would have to be good, real, true, Godlike. To have the "right to exist" fear would have to be a part of God's creation, would have to be good in cause and in effect, but, the effects of fear being evil, fear cannot be good. God, who made all that was made and all that really exists, did not make fear. There being no truth in fear, fear is not true or a part of Truth, and must be and can only be a lie. The nature of fear being so absolutely unlike God's nature, it could not possibly be Godlike. Fear, then, lacks the right to exist because it lacks goodness, reality, truth, and Godlikeness, and this realization enables one to handle fear and prove its nonexistence. Thus one can maintain the fact that actually fear never has entered into his own experience or into that of any man at any time, in any place, or under any circumstance.

The positive, scientific statements of Mrs. Eddy that fear does "not exist," and that fear has "no right to exist," have their foundation in the Biblical authority that "perfect love casteth out fear." Love and fear cannot dwell together. Where one is, the absence of the other is an established fact. Love and fear, then, are forever separate. There is no Love in fear and no fear in Love. The fact that Love casts out fear proves that fear is dispelled by the presence of Love. Fear draws upon the blackboard of so-called human experience pictures of pain, disease, accident, poverty, weakness, and age. Love erases these pictures by knowing that the fear which has produced them is not and never was an integral part of the blackboard. Love, casting out fear, replaces the false images of thought and paints with indelible and changeless hues the perfect image, the man God made in His own likeness. This idea is conscious that it dwells constantly under God's protection and is forever sustained, maintained, and supplied by God; and, by virtue of this consciousness, it cannot possibly be afraid of the claim of fear, regardless of the forms it assumes, whether it be sin, disease, or even death.

It is recorded in the fourth chapter of Mark's Gospel that on one occasion Jesus and his disciples were overtaken by a great storm which filled with water the ship in which they were crossing the sea, threatening to sink it and all its occupants. In this turmoil of wind and waves, Jesus, oblivious of fear, was asleep. The disciples, terrified by the raging elements and seeing in the storm nothing but utter destruction, awakened Jesus with the cry, "Master, carest thou not that we perish?" The record continues that Jesus arose and "rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. ... And there was a great calm." The fury of the storm aroused not one iota of fear within the Master, for to him the evidences of the wind and waves and their possible effect upon the ship were all unimpressive—unreal—and peace, calm, and safety were the only facts in the experience he accepted. As he rebuked the error of boisterous wind and wave, so he rebuked the error of fear in his disciples: "Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?"

In like situations, when war, strife, greed, envy, and hate threaten to destroy all that he holds dear, the Christian Scientist of today should give earnest heed to, and stand firmly upon, the words of his Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, set forth in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 231): "To hold yourself superior to sin, because God made you superior to it and governs man, is true wisdom. To fear sin is to misunderstand the power of Love and the divine Science of being in man's relation to God,—to doubt His government and distrust His omnipotent care. To hold yourself superior to sickness and death is equally wise, and is in accordance with divine Science. To fear them is impossible, when you fully apprehend God and know that they are no part of His creation."