The serviceman who assured a dear one that he was as safe as a good thought, saw something of the spiritual fact that real manhood is not made up of matter. He glimpsed the truth that man is what Christian Science teaches, an individual idea of Mind, living in Mind, enjoying the security and substantiality of Mind, God, and therefore as natively superior to the threat of destructive, material forces as Mind itself.

One in combat service, not understanding God, may be tempted to accept a fatalistic viewpoint. The evidence of dominating material forces may appear overwhelming. In the services it is sometimes said that the enemy's shells and bombs are "tagged," and that if one comes tagged for you, there is no use trying to avert it. But who puts on the tags? Just who prearranges so that fatality is the individual's lot? The Psalmist saw the God-ordered plan for man when he said, "There shall no evil befall thee." Unless God is too intelligent and good to parcel out destructive evil to you and me why bother to defend the hope for a better world?

Fatalism is the belief that all things happen according to a prearranged fate which the individual cannot possibly avoid. It would have us believe man is the inevitable victim, sooner or later, of destructive evil. In contrast, the Bible teaches that man's true being is the son of God, and that as this spiritual fact is understood, he finds that he shares God's dominion over all evil. There is no fatalism in the universe of Mind. Man is predestined to express only good.

On a dark night Australian soldiers in North Africa were bringing up a truck of ammunition to an advance combat unit. They missed the narrow desert trail, and were lost. One who had read a very little of Christian Science remembered that it taught the ever-presence of an intelligent power willing and able to guide and protect man. As best he knew, he turned to this intelligence for guidance. Instantly he felt he must stop the truck and get out. He did so, and found just ahead a bomb. Changing his course, he was three times similarly protected, then led of Mind back to the obscure desert trail and on to his objective. Willingness to trust and obey the one intelligent power saved him from an experience which fatalism might have called "his fate." The truth of Job's meaningful statement was proved: "There is a path which ... the vulture's eye hath not seen."

Man, loved and governed of God, lives beyond the touch or curse of godless, mortal fate. Isaiah accords to God the possession of man. He says, "Fear not:... I have called thee ... thou art mine." Man is not the child of chance, buffeted hither, thither, and yon on the sea of circumstance. His destiny is linked with Principle, God. More essential is he to God and the universe of Mind than are digits to mathematics. Without man God would have no entity.

Fatalism voices the hopelessness of the material mind and selfhood. Bound in its own prison of negation, it resigns itself to its own fatality, then attributes its unhappy fate to a god clothed in mystery and destitute of wisdom and love. Christian Science joyfully proclaims that man exists for the most rational purpose conceivable—to express the Life, Mind, and activity which is God. It teaches, and proves, in some degree, that man is not the present or prospective victim of evil forces, but the continuing, individual manifestation of the forces of good, God.

If mortals do not yet fully understand and demonstrate this fact, that does not affect the fact, does not lessen its presence or actuality. The Master proved for us all that God not evil, is supreme in the life of man. Regardless of all that evil claimed, he showed the individual to be joined to a power and presence that can and will work his deliverance. We can follow in Jesus' footsteps, patiently joyously, pursuing the spiritual facts of being until what may at first seem remote and abstract becomes, through understanding, immediate and concrete.

Let those who go out in the service, and those they leave behind, know that they go forth not fated of evil to an unhappy end, but blessed of God to serve, under His protection, the good of all men. God is remembering them, loving them, embracing them. Says Mary Baker Eddy in "Unity of Good" (p. 3), "Within Himself is every embodiment of Life and Mind." Wheresoever they go, God is there before them. God's law of protection, not evil's law of destruction, is ever present and operating in their behalf. His children He guards with the forces of Love's omnipotence, enfolds in Love's omnipresence, guides and directs with Mind's omniscience.

If human reasoning avers that heavy casualties are necessary and to be expected, we should question and challenge such prophecy. Victory comes, not primarily through the sacrifice of men, but through the forces of God. Already these victory-bringing forces are actively present where the enemy seems to hold sway. No barriers exist to the universal activity of the forces of Deity. As the Psalmist puts it, "The chariots of God are ... thousands of angels: the Lord is among them."

With the angel legions are we allied. They are the right ideas of everywhere present, ever-active Mind. They constitute the true consciousness of every individual everywhere. Mind is their Life, substance, activity, and power. Night and day they work fearlessly, effectively, yes omnipotently, and undefeatably to drive evil, tyranny, pride, hate, cruelty out of the consciousness of men, and enthrone the Mind that is God. As our trust in God and His angel legions grows, our casualty lists will lessen.

Mightier forces than guns, tanks, and shells are working at home and abroad. Divine mind-force fills all space. Evil cannot for long resist its destroyer, the omnipotent, omniactive forces of Spirit, "for our God is a consuming fire." He is in enemy countries, in occupied areas, uttering His voice, declaring to and in all consciousness the mandate of His law. Ears must hear; eyes must see. The earthen beliefs of misled mortals must melt and give way. Evil's resistance to Truth can be, is being, broken.

Man, individually, collectively, universally, lives, not to be the victim of an evil fate, but to glorify and image forth the Life and Mind that is his God. Who can find a more reasonable purpose, or a more rational status, for man? Mrs. Eddy writes in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 229), "Truth is strong with destiny."

Paul Stark Seeley