Christian Scientists are a patriotic people. Because they love God, they love their country and their fellow-men. As they have a spiritual concept of God and man, so they have a spiritual concept of country. Their loyalty to their country is expressed by their love for and obedience to both the laws of their land and the laws of God—the fundamental laws of Being. Lest Christian Scientists should forget the respect due to religion or their countries' laws, Mrs. Eddy placed in the Manual of The Mother Church (p. 48) this ringing reminder: "A member of this Church shall not publish, nor cause to be published,an article that is uncharitable or impertinent towards religion, medicine, the courts, or the laws of our land."

The word "patriotism," being derived from the Latin word "pater," meaning "father," points to the spiritual fact that since all men have one Father, even God, so, in Truth, all men have one country, or consciousness of God's presence and power. As all countries have one sun or central source of light and heat, so, from the spiritual viewpoint, all nations have one Truth, one divine Principle, whence must come their peace and harmony. In view of this fact it were well to remember that one who would arrogate to his own country all the wisdom of the world is not a true patriot but a narrow nationalist. One who intentionally arouses the passions by stirring up strife on the basis of race, religion, or national boundaries, can have no clear concept of the meaning of the word "patriotism." Anything that blurs the sense of the brotherhood of man cannot benefit any nation, while aught that awakens human sense to perceive this brotherhood benefits all nations.

When Jesus was explaining the power of Truth to make them free, his listeners in their pride of race and ancestry asserted, "We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man." In replying Jesus said, "If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham." The inevitable conclusion from his words is that freedom and other ancestral rights are not, as they supposed, a matter of material birth, but of right thinking and acting. That liberty, justice, freedom are right ideas emanating from God, without limitation of time or national boundaries, is the fundamental truth underlying his assertion, "Before Abraham was, I am."

Paul, a brave soldier of Christ, with a high sense of patriotism, wrote, "For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." Paul's understanding of God led him to see that if the strongholds of strife—hate, greed, appetites, and passions—were pulled down, there would be no need for carnal weapons. Both Paul and Jesus knew, however, that the world had many lessons to learn before all wars and rumors of wars would be stilled.

Mrs. Eddy was a true patriot, as is manifest by her life and her writings. One of her signal achievements in behalf of the good of all nations was the establishment of The Christian Science Monitor, a paper that is replete with true patriotism. Although published in the United States of America, its sense of patriotism is by no means limited to the boundaries of this nation. In the legend of the two knights who engaged in combat over a shield, one side of which was silver, and the other gold, each knight could see only one side of the shield—hence the strife. A mirror would have saved the situation! Nations are composed of men who, like these knights, seeing but one side of a situation, plunge headlong into battle. The Christian Science Monitor, by furnishing a mirror which truthfully reflects all sides of every important question, is thereby lessening the liability of war.

Since the strength of a nation is not in its army or military force but in its righteousness, true patriotism involves the willingness to stand for right laws and their enforcement. The Christian Science Monitor is leading a vast army of patriots to see that the enemy common to all countries is a false sense of God and man, expressing itself in unrighteous laws and laxity in the enforcement of just laws. This newspaper is fearlessly uncovering the evils that lie concealed under false names that are designed to deceive the unwary, and is aiding every true patriot in every land to use the right kind of weapon to correct these ills and pull down "every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God." In making a call for this kind of patriotism Mrs. Eddy on page 177 of "Miscellaneous Writings" asks: "Will you give yourselves wholly and irrevocably to the great work of establishing the truth, the gospel, and the Science which are necessary to the salvation of the world from error, sin, disease, and death? Answer at once and practically, and answer aright!"

For those who do "answer aright" is the promise in Isaiah: "And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."