THE only genuine peace, Christian Science shows, is inseparable from victory—victory for righteousness. This is the peace which expresses God, divine Principle, and it is the peace for which all men yearn. It is just, stable, and immeasurably beneficent to all; and Christian Science reveals that it is available for every individual and nation.

It is attained primarily through prayer, a definite and practical way of thinking, which is made plain in Science. This prayer is communion with God, infinite Spirit, Life, Truth, Love. It is recognition of His allness, and of man's oneness with Him as His manifestation, in accordance with Scriptural teaching. As we read in Isaiah: "I girded thee, though thou hast not known me: that they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the Lord, and there is none else."

True prayer, it may be seen, is not a mere human activity. In recognizing the divine nature, it partakes of that nature. It acknowledges God as the only Mind, and thus shows it to be man's privilege and necessity to know as God knows—to experience and express the divine consciousness. Such consciousness discloses the nothingness of whatever is unlike God, and thereby heals.

How is such prayer to be used in relation to war? What is the effectual prayer for victory and peace? The full answer to these questions may be found in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy; but certain points, which have often proved their value, may be indicated here.

The divine Mind, or God, being All, there is no opposing power for God to know; and correct prayer brings assurance that the same is true of man, His likeness. The Christian Scientist therefore may affirm with deep conviction that he is not, in reality, waiting for peace, but that he has it; and many students of Christian Science have been able to see even in battle that this is so, They have recognized the contrary appearance for what it was, an illusion of the material senses, and have been enabled thereby to help themselves and others.

The Christian Scientist perceives, in any instance, that evil is not an actuality. Its overcoming, indeed, appears to be an urgent need everywhere, and the need is specifically dealt with and met through righteous prayer; but this happy result follows from realization of the allness of God and the nothingness of evil.

The Christian Scientist perceives that he cannot be most helpful by maintaining any merely human attitude toward war; that he must maintain as fully as possible the attitude of divine Mind. Thus he rejects both hate and fear. He insists on the perfection of being, and therefore on the naturalness and essentially intelligent character of universal love. He does not, of course, love any wrong action, as it may seem humanly to be. He does not ignore it, nor condone it, nor take any course that would encourage it. Rather does he do every practical thing to frustrate it, and know that he cannot be limited in this endeavor. But he steadfastly insists on the nothingness of whatever is wrong, even as he insists on the allness of good, and thus advances in the proof of these facts. He insists, sweepingly, that war, a form of evil, has no power, no reality, and no inevitable modes or characteristics. He knows that, as a false belief, it can be overcome, and he does not concede for a moment that its overcoming must take a long time or involve great suffering. He knows that war is to be vanquished through true enlightenment and the inspired action that goes with it, and that this enlightenment is available now for himself and all men.

The Christian Scientist is heartened by his knowledge that mortal mind—the world's wrong thinking—does not have to be reformed, on its own terms, but only recognized and proved to be unreal; that the task of enlightened men is not to correct ignorance and error by tedious and uncertain human means, but to realize that such conditions have never existed in God's creation. He gratefully acknowledges that peace and the supremacy of good are not only in prospect, but are already fully expressed in the allness of God.

Such prayer never makes a soldier, a statesman, or a private citizen less effective. On the contrary, it enables anyone to be more intelligent and successful in whatever needs humanly to be done; and it is in accord with Christian Science that he should seek earnestly so to be. "If we are not secretly yearning and openly striving for the accomplishment of all we ask," Mrs. Eddy writes (Science and Health, p.13), "our prayers are 'vain repetitions,' such as the heathen use."

The glorious opportunity set before all men in the way of such prayer and righteous endeavor is indicated in these statements of our Leader's (ibid., p. 481): "God's being is infinity, freedom, harmony, and boundless bliss." "Like the archpriests of yore, man is free 'to enter into the holiest,'—the realm of God." The point of entrance into this perfect state of being is wherever one may seem to be; and the manner of entering it is that of true recognition, of knowing as Mind knows. Proportionally as anyone does this, he beholds and establishes for himself and others the evidences of peace.

ALFRED PITTMAN