Ending Wars
On page 565 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy thus interprets the warfare between the woman and the dragon, as described in the Apocalypse: "After the stars sang together and all was primeval harmony, the material lie made war upon the spiritual idea; but this only impelled the idea to rise to the zenith of demonstration, destroying sin, sickness, and death, and to be caught up unto God,—to be found in its divine Principle."
When the true idea of God and man dawns upon thought through the activity of Christian Science, it glorifies individual consciousness with glimpses of "new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." The man of God's creating becomes a real and living presence, and the heart overflows with the joy of recognizing the verity of spiritual existence. For a time these views of reality make easy the task of denying and rejecting evil's suppositional claim to place and power. God's goodness and its reflection is seen to be the one substantial fact of man's experience. Later, however, the lie of life in matter begins to uncover its nature as enmity against God, by seeming to resist and reverse in human consciousness the unfolding of the true idea of good. The soldier of Christ discovers that if he is to remain loyal to his calling and master this falsity with "the sword of the Spirit," he must open his eyes to behold as nothing every one of its snares and entanglements, together with its more aggressive delusions of mortal mind.
In the early stages of this warfare the temptation to make something out of nothing is particularly strong. The mortal concept of man, the seeming reflection of mortal mind, appears like a very real person, whether claiming to be one's self or another. Hate, fear, sleep, seem in many instances to usurp the throne of Love, and mental integrity to become the prey of malicious suggestion. Mortals are seen viewing each other through a mist of distrust and misunderstanding which magnifies human faultiness, or else bewitched by a glamour of personality into calling evil good. To recognize that these abnormal mental conditions are being induced and fostered by malicious hypnotism seems temporarily to make them more appalling. Evil appears in consciousness as something that has intelligence to conceive plots and power to execute them, as something that is identified with person, race or nation, with class or with organization, and all the beliefs of human courage, personal righteousness, and instinctive faith in good seem powerless to defend mankind from the encroachments of the "great red dragon."
It is at this point that the students of Christian Science begins to understand how perfectly Mrs. Eddy has in her writings forewarned and forearmed all who faithfully apply what she teaches. He perceives the importance of realizing the impersonal nature of the conflict between the spiritual idea and the material lie, and also of proving first of all in his own consciousness the supreme power of the spiritual idea. It becomes increasingly evident that by regarding evil as a reality in the consciousness of fellow mortals, whether in fearing, condemning, or condoning it, he is giving evil place and power in his own experience. "Line upon line" the lesson must be learned that there is no place for evil anywhere, because God is everywhere present.
So, while mortal mind continues to expose its own corruption, the Christian Scientist reaches the point of giving thanks because he is learning to understand the inviolability of the divine Mind. Each day unfolds a clearer recognition that God's reflection is here and is real, even as God Himself is here and is real, and that evil is as powerless to harm the reflection as it is to harm the divine Principle producing and sustaining the reflection. The failure of so-called human wisdom and goodness to meet and master the suggestions of malicious animal magnetism, points the way to a more complete dependence upon God's goodness and that spiritual understanding which is reflected only as mortals give up the belief that evil, whatever guise it may assume, has either place or power. God's reflection, His universal idea, must inevitably triumph over all the hypothetical plots of the material lie; therefore it must inevitably triumph in the experience of each individual, each group of individuals.
Dwelling with increasing persistence upon this fact of the present universality of good and its reflection, the Christian Scientist finds himself able to view with comparative serenity the contortions of the material lie. Is not the activity of the spiritual idea already present, though the lie seems rampant? And cannot this fact be proved by consecrated endeavor? To love God understandingly means loving one's neighbors—a whole universe of neighbors—as one's self. It includes disproving for one's neighbors as for one's self the suggestion that evil has power to hypnotize them or to inhibit the reflected activity of good in their thought. With the unfolding of this idea of brotherhood and mutual mental protection, the arguments of self-righteousness, false judgment, lust, hatred, tyranny, apathy, lose the appearance of reality and grow beautifully less. The warfare between spiritual ideas and material illusions is being accomplished in conformity with the law of God, and the belief of strife among brethren is being destroyed in the place where ultimately all evil beliefs must be destroyed—the individual consciousness.
So each faithful Christian Scientist is privileged at this present time to hear the angel message of "on earth peace, good will toward men," as interpreted by Mrs. Eddy on page 340 of Science and Health, "One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations; constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars."
