Truth's Invisible Host

MARY BEECHER LONGYEAR

Several years ago the writer stood gazing out of the window one dark night at a scene of humanly unpreventable destruction and terror. Several miles away the sky seemed ablaze with flames leaping and darting like demons after their defenseless prey, while billows of dense smoke befouled the air and sky. Night was coming on and the wind was rising to a furious gale. Thought went out to the homeless families who it seemed were at the mercy of the elements. "It cannot be true," I cried aloud. "God is there, ruling by His omnipotent power; and man is His loved child and cannot suffer. Love fills all the world." Then, pulling down the curtain, I closed my thought against the seeming, and soon recovering my trust in infinite good, I found peace. Two hours later I ventured to look out of the window again. I saw only a few dark clouds on the horizon, and knew that Love had poured forth a healing shower and quenched the terrifying error.

Science and Health, the word of Truth, is our angel with the flaming sword at this critical epoch in the material world. Let us all awake and put on our armor, the right concept of God and man, and follow our Leader. The battle is at our own threshold, entering our loved homes, and we must be prepared, better prepared than we are at present, to win the victory. When we come before our great Captain to enlist, if we are harboring thoughts of resentment toward others, or thoughts of condemnation or of self-justification, or any critical thought of any who are in our ranks, — the loyal Board of Directors, the enthusiastic editors and workers of our publications, our practitioners, our lecturers, — if we are desiring to dominate, to control others, He who is all wise and all loving will not receive us into His service. We must pledge ourselves to be obedient, humble, loving, active soldiers, working together in harmony, or we can never win our cause.

Our church members should bear the banner of Love aloft and enter the world's conflict as one man. With thought centered on the perfection of infinite good we would lose sight of personality and stand shoulder to shoulder in this battle against impersonal hate and carnage. Then all the avenues of Christian Science thought would be filled with the reality of Truth's power and the ever presence of Love's kingdom, and the effulgent curtain of divine fire would extinguish the aggressive strivings of despotism in ourselves as well as in others. Then the intense activity of spiritualized thought would reduce to nothingness the baseless argument that God does not govern the sea, sky, and earth.

The questions may here arise, Who is the enemy? What are we to fight against? Every Christian Scientist knows that it is the false claim of sin and a false concept of God and man. We do not have to leave our own environs to be in the battle every day. In treating individual patients we can embrace the whole world in our thought, and realize the truth of our Leader's words, "Thy kingdom is come; Thou art ever-present" (Science and Health, p. 16). If we do not love the man we see every day, how can we be in God's service and help to heal the whole world which seems so sadly in need of love today?

Thinking of the great war as real, as material instead of mental, and then working in desperation to overcome it, even to "treating" it all the livelong day, would only be wasting our energies. We are commanded to use our spiritual weapons against the impersonal powers of evil, and to bring their seeming manifestations to the nothing of nothingness. If the dear Christian Scientists in all lands but knew it, we are the most powerful army in the wide world today. With us is an invisible host of angels winged with love. We must declare and realize that we are united in thought and action, and, hastening to do God's service, sound the trumpet which tells of His omnipotence, proclaiming in unison, "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein."

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