"STABILITY OF THY TIMES"

[Of Special Interest to Young People]

NATALIE G. FORCE

A National magazine recently published a letter from a high school boy protesting the burdens which his generation had inherited from its elders. In his reply the editor stated that he could well understand the young man's position, since in World War I he himself had expressed the same complaint and in World War II had heard his son do the same. He then pointed out that his correspondent said that he believed in "sound economy, integrity, honesty, and a righteous way of life," and that these ideas, though the issue might have to be fought and refought, were the saving hope of the world.

Human history seems to repeat itself, sometimes in new outward forms, and in nothing is this more true than in the belief in turbulent times. Confusion and change have always been inherent in material thinking. Stability is never to be found except in rejecting the mortal sense for some degree of understanding of the spiritual, God-governed universe.

Followers of the one God have always acknowledged His power to deliver men from evil. It is written in Isaiah (33:5, 6): "The Lord is exalted; for he dwelleth on high: he hath filled Zion with judgment and righteousness. And wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times, and strength of salvation." Christ Jesus further emphasized and demonstrated the present possibility of salvation from evil, but it remained for our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, to interpret the Master's teaching that through spiritually scientific thinking one can here and now dissociate his thought and affairs from the disruptions of the human scene. Not only can he do this, but he can lessen the sum total of belief in evil and benefit the receptive thought everywhere.

On page 306 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy writes, "Undisturbed amid the jarring testimony of the material senses, Science, still enthroned, is unfolding to mortals the immutable, harmonious, divine Principle,—is unfolding Life and the universe, ever present and eternal." God, the Principle of divine Science, is omnipotent and omnipresent and has no knowledge of either turbulent times or the lethargy which mortals call peace. Man, the idea of Principle, includes the substance of all the good for which mortals strive, and the individual who knows this is forever at peace with himself and his fellow men. Mrs. Eddy's use of the term Principle as a synonym for God gives a sense of the stability of demonstrated spiritual power.

Material sense, on the other hand, is mesmeric, and its conditions seem as real and powerful as the individual belief in them. We see on every hand how relative and changing are human standards and values, formed as they are by the era and the status into which one was born as well as by the complexities of human character. How different the same behavior, the same amount of money, the same work of art, can appear to different states of mind! The writer of this article once came across a letter in which one of the early railroad magnates said that he had actually seen a train going "at the breathtaking speed of twenty miles an hour."

Only spiritual ideas are permanent; and when they are accepted and cherished, one finds there is a refuge from conflict, whether that conflict is manifested in warfare or the petty clashes of human will; there is peace and order amid seeming chaos; there is abundance for all where inequality and injustice seem to reign. Evil, whether it claims to be an individual or a world-wide condition, is an illusion. As the vivid motion picture may seem real to us when we enter into the fictional experiences of the characters on the screen, so does the human scene deceive us to the extent that we identify thought with it.

We cannot immediately demonstrate absolute spiritual understanding, but we can step by step prove our dominion over the circumstances that confront us. There is a right sense of every individual and every situation—a practical, demonstrable truth which brings harmony into human affairs and benefits all concerned. This is the Christianly scientific way of working out our individual salvation and contributing to the stability of our times.

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