• For biblical teachings of Jesus regarding warfare, see http://www.bibletexts.com/terms/war.htm#jesus.
• For biblical teachings of Paul regarding warfare, see http://www.bibletexts.com/terms/war.htm#paul.
• For extra-canonical teachings of prominent early Christians regarding warfare, see http://www.bibletexts.com/terms/war.htm.

The recognition of Spirit and of infinity comes not suddenly here or hereafter. The pious Polycarp said: "I cannot turn at once from good to evil." Neither do other mortals accomplish the change from error to truth at a single bound.

We need the spirit of the pious Polycarp, who, when the proconsul said to him, "I will set the beasts upon you, unless you yield your religion," replied: "Let them come; I cannot change from good to bad." Then they bound him to the stake, set fire to the fagots, and his pure and strong faith rose higher through the baptism of flame.

Methinks the infidel was blind who said, "Christianity is fit only for women and weak men;" but even infidels may disagree.

On the startled ear of humanity rings out the iron tread of merciless invaders, putting man to the rack for his conscience, or forcing from the lips of manhood shameful confessions,--Galileo kneeling at the feet of priestcraft, and giving the lie to science. But the lofty faith of the pious Polycarp proved the triumph of mind over the body, when they threatened to let loose the wild beasts upon him, and he replied: "Let them come; I cannot change at once from good to bad." Then they bound him to the stake, set fire to the fagots, and his pure faith went up through the baptism of fire to a higher sense of Life. The infidel was blind who said, "Christianity is fit only for women and weak-minded men."

It is related of Justin Martyr that, hearing of a Pythagorean professor of ethics, he expressed the wish to become one of his disciples. "Very well," the teacher replied; "but have you studied music, astronomy, and geometry, and do you think it possible for you to understand aught of that which leads to bliss, without having mastered the sciences that disengage the soul from objects of sense, so rendering it a fit habitation for the intelligences?" On Justin's confessing that he had not studied those branches, he was dismissed by the professor.

History is full of records of suffering. "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church."

Saints and sinners get their full award, but not always in this world. The followers of Christ drank his cup. Ingratitude and persecution filled it to the brim; but God pours the riches of His love into the understanding and affections, giving us strength according to our day.

...The advance guard of progress has paid for the privilege of prayer the price of persecution.

Why do those who profess to follow Christ reject the essential religion he came to establish? Jesus' persecutors made their strongest attack upon this very point. They endeavored to hold him at the mercy of matter and to kill him according to certain assumed material laws.

The Pharisees claimed to know and to teach the divine will, but they only hindered the success of Jesus' mission. Even many of his students stood in his way. If the Master had not taken a student and taught the unseen verities of God, he would not have been crucified. The determination to hold Spirit in the grasp of matter is the persecutor of Truth and Love.

While respecting all that is good in the Church or out of it, one's consecration to Christ is more on the ground of demonstration than of profession. In conscience, we cannot hold to beliefs outgrown; and by understanding more of the divine Principle of the deathless Christ, we are enabled to heal the sick and to triumph over sin.

Remember, thou Christian martyr, it is enough if thou art found worthy to unloose the sandals of thy Master's feet! To suppose that persecution for righteousness' sake belongs to the past, and that Christianity to-day is at peace with the world because it is honored by sects and societies, is to mistake the very nature of religion. Error repeats itself. The trials encountered by prophet, disciple, and apostle, "of whom the world was not worthy," await, in some form, every pioneer of truth.

There is too much animal courage in society and not sufficient moral courage. Christians must take up arms against error at home and abroad. They must grapple with sin in themselves and in others, and continue this warfare until they have finished their course. If they keep the faith, they will have the crown of rejoicing.

Christian experience teaches faith in the right and disbelief in the wrong. It bids us work the more earnestly in times of persecution, because then our labor is more needed. Great is the reward of self-sacrifice, though we may never receive it in this world.

Referring to the materiality of the age, Jesus said: "The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth." Again, foreseeing the persecution which would attend the Science of Spirit, Jesus said: "They shall put you out of the synagogues; yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service; and these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father nor me."

His followers, sorrowful and silent, anticipating the hour of their Master's betrayal, partook of the heavenly manna, which of old had fed in the wilderness the persecuted followers of Truth. Their bread indeed came down from heaven. It was the great truth of spiritual being, healing the sick and casting out error. Their Master had explained it all before, and now this bread was feeding and sustaining them. They had borne this bread from house to house, breaking (explaining) it to others, and now it comforted themselves.

For this truth of spiritual being, their Master was about to suffer violence and drain to the dregs his cup of sorrow. He must leave them. With the great glory of an everlasting victory overshadowing him, he gave thanks and said, "Drink ye all of it."

When the human element in him struggled with the divine, our great Teacher said: "Not my will, but Thine, be done!"--that is, Let not the flesh, but the Spirit, be represented in me. This is the new understanding of spiritual Love. It gives all for Christ, or Truth. It blesses its enemies, heals the sick, casts out error, raises the dead from trespasses and sins, and preaches the gospel to the poor, the meek in heart.

Christians, are you drinking his cup? Have you shared the blood of the New Covenant, the persecutions which attend a new and higher understanding of God? If not, can you then say that you have commemorated Jesus in his cup? Are all who eat bread and drink wine in memory of Jesus willing truly to drink his cup, take his cross, and leave all for the Christ-principle? Then why ascribe this inspiration to a dead rite, instead of showing, by casting out error and making the body "holy, acceptable unto God," that Truth has come to the understanding? If Christ, Truth, has come to us in demonstration, no other commemoration is requisite, for demonstration is Immanuel, or God with us; and if a friend be with us, why need we memorials of that friend?

If all who ever partook of the sacrament had really commemorated the sufferings of Jesus and drunk of his cup, they would have revolutionized the world. If all who seek his commemoration through material symbols will take up the cross, heal the sick, cast out evils, and preach Christ, or Truth, to the poor,--the receptive thought,--they will bring in the millennium.

Through all the disciples experienced, they became more spiritual and understood better what the Master had taught. His resurrection was also their resurrection. It helped them to raise themselves and others from spiritual dulness and blind belief in God into the perception of infinite possibilities.

History is full of records of suffering. "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church." Mortals try in vain to slay Truth with the steel or the stake, but error falls only before the sword of Spirit. Martyrs are the human links which connect one stage with another in the history of religion. They are earth's luminaries, which serve to cleanse and rarefy the atmosphere of material sense and to permeate humanity with purer ideals. Consciousness of right-doing brings its own reward; but not amid the smoke of battle is merit seen and appreciated by lookers-on.

When will Jesus' professed followers learn to emulate him in all his ways and to imitate his mighty works? Those who procured the martyrdom of that righteous man would gladly have turned his sacred career into a mutilated doctrinal platform. May the Christians of to-day take up the more practical import of that career!

Another's suffering cannot lessen our own liability. Did the martyrdom of Savonarola make the crimes of his implacable enemies less criminal?

Was it just for Jesus to suffer? No; but it was inevitable, for not otherwise could he show us the way and the power of Truth. If a career so great and good as that of Jesus could not avert a felon's fate, lesser apostles of Truth may endure human brutality without murmuring, rejoicing to enter into fellowship with him through the triumphal arch of Truth and Love.

Our heavenly Father, divine Love, demands that all men should follow the example of our Master and his apostles and not merely worship his personality. It is sad that the phrase divine service has come so generally to mean public worship instead of daily deeds.

The nature of Christianity is peaceful and blessed, but in order to enter into the kingdom, the anchor of hope must be cast beyond the veil of matter into the Shekinah into which Jesus has passed before us; and this advance beyond matter must come through the joys and triumphs of the righteous as well as through their sorrows and afflictions. Like our Master, we must depart from material sense into the spiritual sense of being.

The God-inspired walk calmly on though it be with bleeding footprints, and in the hereafter they will reap what they now sow. The pampered hypocrite may have a flowery pathway here, but he cannot forever break the Golden Rule and escape the penalty due.

Jesus foresaw the reception Christian Science would have before it was understood, but this foreknowledge hindered him not. He fulfilled his God-mission, and then sat down at the right hand of the Father. Persecuted from city to city, his apostles still went about doing good deeds, for which they were maligned and stoned. The truth taught by Jesus, the elders scoffed at. Why? Because it demanded more than they were willing to practise. It was enough for them to believe in a national Deity; but that belief, from their time to ours, has never made a disciple who could cast out evils and heal the sick.

Jesus' life proved, divinely and scientifically, that God is Love, whereas priest and rabbi affirmed God to be a mighty potentate, who loves and hates. The Jewish theology gave no

Jesus' last proof was the highest, the most convincing, the most profitable to his students. The malignity of brutal persecutors, the treason and suicide of his betrayer, were overruled by divine Love to the glorification of the man and of the true idea of God, which Jesus' persecutors had mocked and tried to slay. The final demonstration of the truth which Jesus taught, and for which he was crucified, opened a new era for the world. Those who slew him to stay his influence perpetuated and extended it.

Jesus rose higher in demonstration because of the cup of bitterness he drank. Human law had condemned him, but he was demonstrating divine Science. Out of reach of the barbarity of his enemies, he was acting under spiritual law in defiance of matter and mortality, and that spiritual law sustained him. The divine must overcome the human at every point. The Science Jesus taught and lived must triumph over all material beliefs about life, substance, and intelligence, and the multitudinous errors growing from such beliefs.

Love must triumph over hate.

Paul writes: "For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the [seeming] death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." Three days after his bodily burial he talked with his disciples. The persecutors had failed to hide immortal Truth and Love in a sepulchre.

Glory be to God, and peace to the struggling hearts! Christ hath rolled away the stone from the door of human hope and faith, and through the revelation and demonstration of life in God, hath elevated them to possible at-one-ment with the spiritual idea of man and his divine Principle, Love.

Jesus could have withdrawn himself from his enemies. He had power to lay down a human sense of life for his spiritual identity in the likeness of the divine; but he allowed men to attempt the destruction of the mortal body in order that he might furnish the proof of immortal life. Nothing could kill this Life of man. Jesus could give his temporal life into his enemies' hands; but when his earth-mission was accomplished, his spiritual life, indestructible and eternal, was found forever the same. He knew that matter had no life and that real Life is God; therefore he could no more be separated from his spiritual Life than God could be extinguished.

His consummate example was for the salvation of us all, but only through doing the works which he did and taught others to do. His purpose in healing was not alone to restore health, but to demonstrate his divine Principle. He was inspired by God, by Truth and Love, in all that he said and did. The motives of his persecutors were pride, envy, cruelty, and vengeance, inflicted on the physical Jesus, but aimed at the divine Principle, Love, which rebuked their sensuality.

Jesus was unselfish. His spirituality separated him from sensuousness, and caused the selfish materialist to hate him; but it was this spirituality which enabled Jesus to heal the sick, cast out evil, and raise the dead.

From early boyhood he was about his "Father's business." His pursuits lay far apart from theirs. His master was Spirit; their master was matter. He served God; they served mammon. His affections were pure; theirs were carnal. His senses drank in the spiritual evidence of health, holiness, and life; their senses testified oppositely, and absorbed the material evidence of sin, sickness, and death.

Their imperfections and impurity felt the ever-present rebuke of his perfection and purity. Hence the world's hatred of the just and perfect Jesus, and the prophet's foresight of the reception error would give him. "Despised and rejected of men," was Isaiah's graphic word concerning the coming Prince of Peace. Herod and Pilate laid aside old feuds in order to unite in putting to shame and death the best man that ever trod the globe. To-day, as of old, error and evil again make common cause against the exponents of truth.

The "man of sorrows" best understood the nothingness of material life and intelligence and the mighty actuality of all-inclusive God, good. These were the two cardinal points of Mind-healing, or Christian Science, which armed him with Love. The highest earthly representative of God, speaking of human ability to reflect divine power, prophetically said to his disciples, speaking not for their day only but for all time: "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also;" and "These signs shall follow them that believe."

The accusations of the Pharisees were as self-contradictory as their religion. The bigot, the debauchee, the hypocrite, called Jesus a glutton and a wine-bibber. They said: "He casteth out devils through Beelzebub," and is the "friend of publicans and sinners." The latter accusation was true, but not in their meaning. Jesus was no ascetic. He did not fast as did the Baptist's disciples; yet there never lived a man so far removed from appetites and passions as the Nazarene. He rebuked sinners pointedly and unflinchingly, because he was their friend; hence the cup he drank.

The reputation of Jesus was the very opposite of his character. Why? Because the divine Principle and practice of Jesus were misunderstood. He was at work in divine Science. His words and works were unknown to the world because above and contrary to the world's religious sense. Mortals believed in God as humanly mighty, rather than as divine, infinite Love.

The world could not interpret aright the discomfort which Jesus inspired and the spiritual blessings which might flow from such discomfort. Science shows the cause of the shock so often produced by the truth,--namely, that this shock arises from the great distance between the individual and Truth. Like Peter, we should weep over the warning, instead of denying the truth or mocking the lifelong sacrifice which goodness makes for the destruction of evil.

Jesus bore our sins in his body. He knew the mortal errors which constitute the material body, and could destroy those errors; but at the time when Jesus felt our infirmities, he had not conquered all the beliefs of the flesh or his sense of material life, nor had he risen to his final demonstration of spiritual power.

Had he shared the sinful beliefs of others, he would have been less sensitive to those beliefs. Through the magnitude of his human life, he demonstrated the divine Life. Out of the amplitude of his pure affection, he defined Love. With the affluence of Truth, he vanquished error. The world acknowledged not his righteousness, seeing it not; but earth received the harmony his glorified example introduced.

Who is ready to follow his teaching and example? All must sooner or later plant themselves in Christ, the true idea of God. That he might liberally pour his dear-bought treasures into empty or sin-filled human storehouses, was the inspiration of Jesus' intense human sacrifice. In witness of his divine commission, he presented the proof that Life, Truth, and Love heal the sick and the sinning, and triumph over death through Mind, not matter. This was the highest proof he could have offered of divine Love. His hearers understood neither his words nor his works. They would not accept his meek interpretation of life nor follow his example.

His earthly cup of bitterness was drained to the dregs. There adhered to him only a few unpretentious friends, whose religion was something more than a name. It was so vital, that it enabled them to understand the Nazarene and to share the glory of eternal life. He said that those who followed him should drink of his cup, and history has confirmed the prediction.

If that Godlike and glorified man were physically on earth to-day, would not some, who now profess to love him, reject him? Would they not deny him even the rights of humanity, if he entertained any other sense of being and religion than theirs? The advancing century, from a deadened sense of the invisible God, to-day subjects to unchristian comment and usage the idea of Christian healing enjoined by Jesus; but this does not affect the invincible facts.

Perhaps the early Christian era did Jesus no more injustice than the later centuries have bestowed upon the healing Christ and spiritual idea of being. Now that the gospel of healing is again preached by the wayside, does not the pulpit sometimes scorn it? But that curative mission, which presents the Saviour in a clearer light than mere words can possibly do, cannot be left out of Christianity, although it is again ruled out of the synagogue.

Truth's immortal idea is sweeping down the centuries, gathering beneath its wings the sick and sinning. My weary hope tries to realize that happy day, when man shall recognize the Science of Christ and love his neighbor as himself,--when he shall realize God's omnipotence and the healing power of the divine Love in what it has done and is doing for mankind. The promises will be fulfilled. The time for the reappearing of the divine healing is throughout all time; and whosoever layeth his earthly all on the altar of divine Science, drinketh of Christ's cup now, and is endued with the spirit and power of Christian healing.

Earth has no repayment for the persecutions which attend a new step in Christianity; but the spiritual recompense of the persecuted is assured in the elevation of existence above mortal discord and in the gift of divine Love.

When Christian Science and animal magnetism are both comprehended, as they will be at no distant date, it will be seen why the author of this book has been so unjustly persecuted and belied by wolves in sheep's clothing.

The word martyr, from the Greek, means witness; but those who testified for Truth were so often persecuted unto death, that at length the word martyr was narrowed in its significance and so has come always to mean one who suffers for his convictions. The new faith in the Christ, Truth, so roused the hatred of the opponents of Christianity, that the followers of Christ were burned, crucified, and otherwise persecuted; and so it came about that human rights were hallowed by the gallows and the cross.

Jesus established his church and maintained his mission on a spiritual foundation of Christ-healing. He taught his followers that his religion had a divine Principle, which would cast out error and heal both the sick and the sinning. He claimed no intelligence, action, nor life separate from God. Despite the persecution this brought upon him, he used his divine power to save men both bodily and spiritually.

The Christian era was ushered in with signs and wonders. Reforms have commonly been attended with bloodshed and persecution, even when the end has been brightness and peace; but the present new, yet old, reform in religious faith will teach men patiently and wisely to stem the tide of sectarian bitterness, whenever it flows inward.

To fall away from Truth in times of persecution, shows that we never understood Truth. From out the bridal chamber of wisdom there will come the warning, "I know you not." Unimproved opportunities will rebuke us when we attempt to claim the benefits of an experience we have not made our own, try to reap the harvest we have not sown, and wish to enter unlawfully into the labors of others. Truth often remains unsought, until we seek this remedy for human woe because we suffer severely from error.

Attempts to conciliate society and so gain dominion over mankind, arise from worldly weakness. He who leaves all for Christ forsakes popularity and gains Christianity.

Society is a foolish juror, listening only to one side of the case. Justice often comes too late to secure a verdict. People with mental work before them have no time for gossip about false law or testimony. To reconstruct timid justice and place the fact above the falsehood, is the work of time.

The cross is the central emblem of history. It is the lodestar in the demonstration of Christian healing,--the demonstration by which sin and sickness are destroyed. The sects, which endured the lash of their predecessors, in their turn lay it upon those who are in advance of creeds.

The sinner makes his own hell by doing evil, and the saint his own heaven by doing right. The opposite persecutions of material sense, aiding evil with evil, would deceive the very elect.

Unless the harmony and immortality of man are becoming more apparent, we are not gaining the true idea of God; and the body will reflect what governs it, whether it be Truth or error, understanding or belief, Spirit or matter. Therefore "acquaint now thyself with Him, and be at peace." Be watchful, sober, and vigilant. The way is straight and narrow, which leads to the understanding that God is the only Life. It is a warfare with the flesh, in which we must conquer sin, sickness, and death, either here or hereafter,--certainly before we can reach the goal of Spirit, or life in God.

Paul was not at first a disciple of Jesus but a persecutor of Jesus' followers. When the truth first appeared to him in Science, Paul was made blind, and his blindness was felt; but spiritual light soon enabled him to follow the example and teachings of Jesus, healing the sick and preaching Christianity throughout Asia Minor, Greece, and even in imperial Rome.

Saul of Tarsus beheld the way--the Christ, or Truth --only when his uncertain sense of right yielded to a spiritual sense, which is always right. Then the man was changed. Thought assumed a nobler outlook, and his life became more spiritual. He learned the wrong that he had done in persecuting Christians, whose religion he had not understood, and in humility he took the new name of Paul. He beheld for the first time the true idea of Love, and learned a lesson in divine Science.

The Christian martyrs were prophets of Christian Science. Through the uplifting and consecrating power of divine Truth, they obtained a victory over the corporeal senses, a victory which Science alone can explain. Stolidity, which is a resisting state of mortal mind, suffers less, only because it knows less of material law.

The Apostle John testified to the divine basis of Christian Science, when dire inflictions failed to destroy his body. Idolaters, believing in more than one mind, had "gods many," and thought that they could kill the body with matter, independently of mind.

The perversion of Mind-science is like asserting that the products of eight multiplied by five, and of seven by ten, are both forty, and that their combined sum is fifty, and then calling the process mathematics. Wiser than his persecutors, Jesus said: "If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out?"

Abuse of the motives and religion of St. Paul hid from view the apostle's character, which made him equal to his great mission. Persecution of all who have spoken something new and better of God has not only obscured the light of the ages, but has been fatal to the persecutors. Why? Because it has hid from them the true idea which has been presented. To misunderstand Paul, was to be ignorant of the divine idea he taught. Ignorance of the divine idea betrays at once a greater ignorance of the divine Principle of the idea--ignorance of Truth and Love. The understanding of Truth and Love, the Principle which works out the ends of eternal good and destroys both faith in evil and the practice of evil, leads to the discernment of the divine idea.

Revelation xii. 13. And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child.

The march of mind and of honest investigation will bring the hour when the people will chain, with fetters of some sort, the growing occultism of this period.

The martyrdom of Jesus was the culminating sin of Pharisaism. It rent the veil of the temple. It revealed the false foundations and superstructures of superficial religion, tore from bigotry and superstition their coverings, and opened the sepulchre with divine Science, --immortality and Love.

Shakespeare writes: "Sweet are the uses of adversity." Jesus said: "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake; . . . for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you."

Love is the fulfilling of the law: it is grace, mercy, and justice. I used to think it sufficiently just to abide by our State statutes; that if a man should aim a ball at my heart, and I by firing first could kill him and save my own life, that this was right.

Love metes not out human justice, but divine mercy. If one's life were attacked, and one could save it only in accordance with common law, by taking another's, would one sooner give up his own? We must love our enemies in all the manifestations wherein and whereby we love our friends; must even try not to expose their faults, but to do them good whenever opportunity occurs. To mete out human justice to those who persecute and despitefully use one, is not leaving all retribution to God and returning blessing for cursing. If special opportunity for doing good to one's enemies occur not, one can include them in his general effort to benefit the race. Because I can do much general good to such as hate me, I do it with earnest, special care--since they permit me no other way, though with tears have I striven for it. When smitten on one cheek, I have turned the other: I have but two to present.

I would enjoy taking by the hand all who love me not, and saying to them, "I love you, and would not knowingly harm you." Because I thus feel, I say to others: Hate no one; for hatred is a plague-spot that spreads its virus and kills at last. If indulged, it masters us; brings suffering upon suffering to its possessor, throughout time and beyond the grave. If you have been badly wronged, forgive and forget: God will recompense this wrong, and punish, more severely than you could, him who has striven to injure you. Never return evil for evil;

In the eighties, anonymous letters mailed to me contained threats to blow up the hall where I preached; yet I never lost my faith in God, and neither informed the police of these letters nor sought the protection of the laws of my country. I leaned on God, and was safe.

Undoubtedly our Master partook of the Jews' feast of the Passover, and drank from their festal wine-cup. This, however, is not the cup to which I call your attention,--even the cup of martyrdom: wherein Spirit and matter, good and evil, seem to grapple, and the human struggles against the divine, up to a point of discovery; namely, the impotence of evil, and the omnipotence of good, as divinely attested. Anciently, the blood of martyrs was believed to be the seed of the Church. Stalled theocracy would make this fatal doctrine just and sovereign, even a divine decree, a law of Love! That the innocent shall suffer for the guilty, is inhuman. The prophet declared, "Thou shalt put away the guilt of innocent blood from Israel." This is plain: that whatever belittles, befogs, or belies the nature and essence of Deity, is not divine. Who, then, shall father or favor this sentence passed upon innocence? thereby giving the signet of God to the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of His beloved Son, the righteous Nazarene,--christened by John the Baptist, "the Lamb of God."

Oh! shameless insult to divine royalty, that drew from the great Master this answer to the questions of the rabbinical rabble: "If I tell you, ye will not believe; and if I also ask you, ye will not answer me, nor let me go."

Infinitely greater than human pity, is divine Love,--that cannot be unmerciful. Human tribunals, if just, borrow their sense of justice from the divine Principle thereof, which punishes the guilty, not the innocent. The Teacher of both law and gospel construed the substitution of a good man to suffer for evil-doers--a crime! When foretelling his own crucifixion, he said, "Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh!"

Would Jesus thus have spoken of what was indispensable for the salvation of a world of sinners, or of the individual instrument in this holy (?) alliance for accomplishing such a monstrous work? or have said of him whom God foreordained and predestined to fulfil a divine decree, "It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea"? The divine order is the acme of mercy: it is neither questionable nor assailable: it is not evil producing good, nor good ultimating in evil. Such an inference were impious. Holy Writ denounces him that declares, "Let us do evil, that good may come! whose damnation is just."

Good is not educed from its opposite: and Love divine spurned, lessens not the hater's hatred nor the criminal's crime; nor reconciles justice to injustice; nor substitutes the suffering of the Godlike for the suffering due to sin. Neither spiritual bankruptcy nor a religious chancery can win high heaven, or the "Well done, good and faithful servant,...enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

Divine Love knows no hate; for hate, or the hater, is nothing: God never made it, and He made all that was made. The hater's pleasures are unreal; his sufferings, self-imposed; his existence is a parody, and he ends--with suicide.

The murder of the just Nazarite was incited by the same spirit that in our time massacres our missionaries, butchers the helpless Armenians, slaughters innocents. Evil was, and is, the illusion of breaking the First Commandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me:" it is either idolizing something and somebody, or hating them: it is the spirit of idolatry, envy, jealousy, covetousness, superstition, lust, hypocrisy, witchcraft.

That man can break the forever-law of infinite Love, was, and is, the serpent's biggest lie! and ultimates in a religion of pagan priests bloated with crime; a religion that demands human victims to be sacrificed to human passions and human gods, or tortured to appease the anger of a so-called god or a miscalled man or woman! The Assyrian Merodach, or the god of sin, was the "lucky god;" and the Babylonian Yawa, or Jehovah, was the Jewish tribal deity. The Christian's God is neither, and is too pure to behold iniquity.

Divine Science has rolled away the stone from the sepulchre of our Lord; and there has risen to the awakened thought the majestic atonement of divine Love. The at-one-ment with Christ has appeared--not through vicarious suffering, whereby the just obtain a pardon for the unjust,--but through the eternal law of justice; wherein sinners suffer for their own sins, repent, forsake sin, love God, and keep His commandments, thence to receive the reward of righteousness: salvation from sin, not through the death of a man, but through a divine Life, which is our Redeemer.

The monument whose finger points upward, commemorates the earthly life of a martyr; but this is not all of the philanthropist, hero, and Christian. The Truth he has taught and spoken lives, and moves in our midst a divine afflatus. Thus it is that the ideal Christ--or impersonal infancy, manhood, and womanhood of Truth and Love--is still with us.

Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake.--2 COR. xii. 10.

The miracles recorded in the Scriptures illustrate the life of Jesus as nothing else can; but they cost him the hatred of the rabbis. The rulers sought the life of Jesus; they would extinguish whatever denied and defied their superstition. We learn somewhat of the qualities of the divine Mind through the human Jesus. The power of his transcendent goodness is manifest in the control it gave him over the qualities opposed to Spirit which mortals name matter.

It was the consummate naturalness of Truth in the mind of Jesus, that made his healing easy and instantaneous. Jesus regarded good as the normal state of man, and evil as the abnormal; holiness, life, and health as the better representatives of God than sin, disease, and death. The master Metaphysician understood omnipotence to be All-power: because Spirit was to him All-in-all, matter was palpably an error of premise and conclusion, while God was the only substance, Life, and intelligence of man.

The apostle Paul insists on the rare rule in Christian Science that we have chosen for a text; a rule that is susceptible of proof, and is applicable to every stage and state of human existence. The divine Science of this rule is quite as remote from the general comprehension of mankind as are the so-called miracles of our Master, and for the sole reason that it is their basis. The foundational facts of Christian Science are gathered from the supremacy of spiritual law and its antagonism to every supposed material law. Christians to-day should be able to say, with the sweet sincerity of the apostle, "I take pleasure in infirmities,"--I enjoy the touch of weakness, pain, and all suffering of the flesh, because it compels me to seek the remedy for it, and to find happiness, apart from the personal senses. The holy calm of Paul's well-tried hope met no obstacle or circumstances paramount to the triumph of a reasonable faith in the omnipotence of good, involved in its divine Principle, God: the so-called pains and pleasures of matter were alike unreal to Jesus; for he regarded matter as only a vagary of mortal belief, and subdued it with this understanding.

The abstract statement that all is Mind, supports the entire wisdom of the text; and this statement receives the mortal scoff only because it meets the immortal demands of Truth. The Science of Paul's declaration resolves the element misnamed matter into its original sin, or human will; that will which would oppose bringing the qualities of Spirit into subjection to Spirit. Sin brought death; and death is an element of matter, or material falsity, never of Spirit.

When Jesus reproduced his body after its burial, he revealed the myth or material falsity of evil; its powerlessness to destroy good, and the omnipotence of the Mind that knows this: he also showed forth the error and nothingness of supposed life in matter, and the great somethingness of the good we possess, which is of Spirit, and immortal.

Understanding this, Paul took pleasure in infirmities, for it enabled him to triumph over them,--he declared that "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death;" he took pleasure in "reproaches" and "persecutions," because they were so many proofs that he had wrought the problem of being beyond the common apprehension of sinners; he took pleasure in "necessities," for they tested and developed latent power.

Understanding this, Paul took pleasure in infirmities, for it enabled him to triumph over them,--he declared that "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death;" he took pleasure in "reproaches" and "persecutions," because they were so many proofs that he had wrought the problem of being beyond the common apprehension of sinners; he took pleasure in "necessities," for they tested and developed latent power.

This is my endeavor, to be a Christian, to assimilate the character and practice of the anointed; and no motive can cause a surrender of this effort... I esteem all honest people, and love them, and hold to loving our enemies and doing good to them that "despitefully use you and persecute you."

From careful observation and experience came my clue to the uses and abuses of organization. Therefore, in accord with my special request, followed that noble, unprecedented action of the Christian Scientist Association connected with my College when dissolving that organization,--in forgiving enemies, returning good for evil, in following Jesus' command, "Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." I saw these fruits of Spirit, long-suffering and temperance, fulfil the law of Christ in righteousness. I also saw that Christianity has withstood less the temptation of popularity than of persecution.

It is often asked, Why are faith-cures sometimes more speedy than some of the cures wrought through Christian Scientists? Because faith is belief, and not understanding; and it is easier to believe, than to understand spiritual Truth. It demands less cross-bearing, self-renunciation, and divine Science to admit the claims of the corporeal senses and appeal to God for relief through a humanized conception of His power, than to deny these claims and learn the divine way,--drinking Jesus' cup, being baptized with his baptism, gaining the end through persecution and purity.

Ritualism and dogma lead to self-righteousness and bigotry, which freeze out the spiritual element. Pharisaism killeth; Spirit giveth Life. The odors of persecution, tobacco, and alcohol are not the sweet-smelling savor of Truth and Love. Feasting the senses, gratification of appetite and passion, have no warrant in the gospel or the Decalogue. Mortals must take up the cross if they would follow Christ, and worship the Father "in spirit and in truth."

Jesus walked with bleeding feet the thorny earth-road, treading "the winepress alone." His persecutors said mockingly, "Save thyself, and come down from the cross." This was the very thing he was doing, coming down from the cross, saving himself after the manner that he had taught, by the law of Spirit's supremacy; and this was done through what is humanly called agony.

Even the ice-bound hypocrite melts in fervent heat, before he apprehends Christ as "the way." The Master's sublime triumph over all mortal mentality was immortality's goal. He was too wise not to be willing to test the full compass of human woe, being "in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin."

I love Boston, and especially the laws of the State whereof this city is the capital. To-day, as of yore, her laws have befriended progress.

Yet when I recall the past,--how the gospel of healing was simultaneously praised and persecuted in Boston,--and remember also that God is just, I wonder whether, were our dear Master in our New England metropolis at this hour, he would not weep over it, as he wept over Jerusalem! O ye tears! Not in vain did ye flow. Those sacred drops were but enshrined for future use, and God has now unsealed their receptacle with His outstretched arm. Those crystal globes made morals for mankind. They will rise with joy, and with power to wash away, in floods of forgiveness, every crime, even when mistakenly committed in the name of religion.

An unjust, unmerciful, and oppressive priesthood must perish, for false prophets in the present as in the past stumble onward to their doom; while their tabernacles crumble with dry rot. "God is not mocked," and "the word of the Lord endureth forever."

They drink the cup of Christ and are baptized in the purification of persecution who discern his true merit,--the unseen glory of suffering for others. Physical torture affords but a slight illustration of the pangs which come to one upon whom the world of sense falls with its leaden weight in the endeavor to crush out of a career its divine destiny.

The blood of Christ speaketh better things than that of Abel. The real atonement--so infinitely beyond the heathen conception that God requires human blood to propitiate His justice and bring His mercy--needs to be understood. The real blood or Life of Spirit is not yet discerned. Love bruised and bleeding, yet mounting to the throne of glory in purity and peace, over the steps of uplifted humanity,--this is the deep significance of the blood of Christ.

History repeats itself. The Pharisees of old warned the people to beware of Jesus, and contemptuously called him "this fellow." Jesus said, "For which of these works do ye stone me?" as much as to ask, Is it the work most derided and envied that is most acceptable to God? Not that he would cease to do the will of his Father on account of persecution, but he would repeat his work to the best advantage for mankind and the glory of his Father.

In Queen Elizabeth's time Protestantism could sentence men to the dungeon or stake for their religion, and so abrogate the rights of conscience and choke the channels of God. Ecclesiastical tyranny muzzled the mouth lisping God's praise; and instead of healing, it palsied the weak hand outstretched to God. Progress, legitimate to the human race, pours the healing balm of Truth and Love into every wound. It reassures us that no Reign of Terror or rule of error will again unite Church and State, or reenact, through the civil arm of government, the horrors of religious persecution.

The Rev. S. E. Herrick, a Congregational clergyman of Boston, says: "Heretics of yesterday are martyrs to-day." In every age and clime, "On earth peace, good will toward men" must be the watchword of Christianity.

Conflict and persecution are the truest signs that can be given of the greatness of a cause or of an individual, provided this warfare is honest and a world-imposed struggle. Such conflict never ends till unconquerable right is begun anew, and hath gained fresh energy and final victory.

Certain elements in human nature would undermine the civic, social, and religious rights and laws of nations and peoples, striking at liberty, human rights, and self-government--and this, too, in the name of God, justice, and humanity! These elements assail even the new-old doctrines of the prophets and of Jesus and his disciples. History shows that error repeats itself until it is exterminated. Surely the wisdom of our forefathers is not added but subtracted from whatever sways the sceptre of self and pelf over individuals, weak provinces, or peoples. Here our hope anchors in God who reigns, and justice and judgment are the habitation of His throne forever.

The special benediction of our Father-Mother God rests upon this hour: "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake."

Yea, it is the healing power of Truth that is persecuted to-day, the spirit of divine Love, and Christ Jesus possessed it, practised it, and taught his followers to do likewise. This spirit of God is made manifest in the flesh, healing and saving men,--it is the Christ, Comforter, "which taketh away the sin of the world;" and yet Christ is rejected of men!

Sacred history shows that those who have followed exclusively Christ's teaching, have been scourged in the synagogues and persecuted from city to city. But this is no cause for not following it; and my only apology for trying to follow it is that I love Christ more than all the world, and my demonstration of Christian Science in healing has proven to me beyond a doubt that Christ, Truth, is indeed the way of salvation from all that worketh or maketh a lie. As Jesus said: "It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master." It is well to know that even Christ Jesus, who was not popular among the worldlings in his age, is not popular with them in this age; hence the inference that he who would be popular if he could, is not a student of Christ Jesus.

Christian Scientists are persecuted even as all other religious denominations have been, since ever the primitive Christians, "of whom the world was not worthy." We err in thinking the object of vital Christianity is only the bequeathing of itself to the coming centuries. The successive utterances of reformers are essential to its propagation.

The richest and most positive proof that a religion in this century is just what it was in the first centuries is that the same reviling it received then it receives now, and from the same motives which actuate one sect to persecute another in advance of it.

Beloved brethren, another year of God's loving providence for His people in times of persecution has marked the history of Christian Science. With no special effort to achieve this result, our church communicants constantly increase in number, unity, steadfastness.

The old and recurring martyrdom of God's best witnesses is the infirmity of evil, the modus operandi of human error, carnality, opposition to God and His power in man. Persecuting a reformer is like sentencing a man for communicating with foreign nations in other ways than by walking every step over the land route, and swimming the ocean with a letter in his hand to leave on a foreign shore. Our heavenly Father never destined mortals who seek for a better country to wander on the shores of time disappointed travellers, tossed to and fro by adverse circumstances, inevitably subject to sin, disease, and death. Divine Love waits and pleads to save mankind--and awaits with warrant and welcome, grace and glory, the earth-weary and heavy-laden who find and point the path to heaven.

Envy or abuse of him who, having a new idea or a more spiritual understanding of God, hastens to help on his fellow-mortals, is neither Christian nor Science. If a postal service, a steam engine, a submarine cable, a wireless telegraph, each in turn has helped mankind, how much more is accomplished when the race is helped onward by a new-old message from God, even the knowledge of salvation from sin, disease, and death.

The world's wickedness gave our glorified Master a bitter cup--which he drank, giving thanks, then gave it to his followers to drink. Therefore it is thine, advancing Christian, and this is thy Lord's benediction upon it: "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you."

The faith and works demanded of man in our textbooks, the Bible and "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," and the proof of the practicality of this faith and these works, show conclusively that Christian Science is indeed Science,--the Science of Christ, the Science of God and man, of the creator and creation. In every age and at its every appearing, Science, until understood, has been persecuted and maligned. Infinite perfection is unfolded as man attains the stature of man in Christ Jesus by means of the Science which Jesus taught and practised. Alluding to this divine method, the Psalmist said: "Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?"

On November 21, 1898, in my class on Christian Science were many professional men and women of the highest talents, scholarship, and character in this or any other country. What was it that brought together this class to learn of her who, thirty years ago, was met with the anathema spoken of in Scripture: "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake"? It was the healing of the sick, the saving of sinners, the works even more than the words of Christ, Truth, which had of a verity stirred the people to search the Scriptures and to find in them man's only medicine for mind and body. This Aesculapius, defined Christianly and demonstrated scientifically, is the divine Principle whose rules demonstrated prove one's faith by his works.

In the ranks of the M.D.'s are noble men and women, and I love them; but they must refrain from persecuting and misrepresenting a system of medicine which from personal experience I have proved to be more certain and curative in functional and organic diseases than any material method. I admonish Christian Scientists either to speak charitably of all mankind or to keep silent, for love fulfils divine law and without this proof of love mental practice were profitless.

The doom of the Babylonish woman, referred to in Revelation, is being fulfilled. This woman, "drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus," "drunk with the wine of her fornication," would enter even the church,--the body of Christ, Truth; and, retaining the heart of the harlot and the purpose of the destroying angel, would pour wormwood into the waters--the disturbed human mind--to drown the strong swimmer struggling for the shore,--aiming for Truth,--and if possible, to poison such as drink of the living water.

We should thank God for persecution and for prosecution, if from these ensue a purer Protestantism and monotheism for the latter days of the nineteenth century. A siege of the combined centuries, culminating in fierce attack, cannot demolish our strongholds. The forts of Christian Science, garrisoned by God's chosen ones, can never surrender. Unlike Russia's armament, ours is not costly as men count cost, but it is rich beyond price, staunch and indestructible on land or sea; it is not curtailed in peace, surrendered in conquest, nor laid down at the feet of progress through the hands of omnipotence. And why? Because it is "on earth peace, good will toward men,"--a cover and a defence adapted to all men, all nations, all times, climes, and races. I cannot quench my desire to say this; and words are not vain when the depth of desire can find no other outlet to liberty. "Therefore . . . let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works." (Hebrews 6 : 1.)

The constituted religious rights in New Hampshire will, I trust, never be marred by the illegitimate claims of envy, jealousy, or persecution.

In your renowned city, the genesis of Christian Science was allied to that olden axiom: "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church;" but succeeding years show in livid lines that the great Shepherd has nurtured and nourished this church as a fatling of the flock. To-day the glory of His presence rests upon it, the joy of many generations awaits it, and this prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled among you: "I will direct their work in truth, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them."

Be patient towards persecution. Injustice has not a tithe of the power of justice. Your enemies will advertise for you. Christian Science is spreading steadily throughout the world. Persecution is the weakness of tyrants engendered by their fear, and love will cast it out. Continue steadfast in love and good works.

The earthly price of spirituality in religion and medicine in a material age is persecution, and the moral distance between Christianity and materialism precludes Jesus' doctrine, now as then, from finding favor with certain purely human views. The prophets of old looked for something higher than the systems and practices of their times. They foresaw the new dispensation of Truth and the demonstration of God in His more infinite meanings,--the demonstration which was to destroy sin, disease, and death, establish the definition of omnipotence, and illustrate the Science of Mind. Earth has not known another so great and good as Christ Jesus. Then can we find a better moral philosophy, a more complete, natural, and divine Science of medicine, or a better religion than his?

Our Cause is growing apace under the present persecution thereof. This is a crucial hour, in which the coward and the hypocrite come to the surface to pass off, while the loyal at heart and the worker in the spirit of Truth are rising to the zenith of success,--the "Well done, good and faithful," spoken by our Master.

Towards the animal elements manifested in ignorance, persecution, and lean glory, and to their Babel of confusion worse confounded, let Christian Scientists be charitable. Let the voice of Truth and Love be heard above the dire din of mortal nothingness, and the majestic march of Christian Science go on ad infinitum, praising God, doing the works of primitive Christianity, and enlightening the world.

The lie and the liar are self-destroyed. Truth is immortal. "Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: . . . for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you." The cycle of good obliterates the epicycle of evil.

Our lamented President, in his loving acquiescence, believed that his martyrdom was God's way.

The tree is known by its fruit. If, as he implies, Christian Science is not a departure from the first century churches,--as surely it is not,--why persecute it? Are the churches opening fire on their own religious ranks, or are they attacking a peaceable party quite their antipode? Christian Science is a reflected glory; it shines with borrowed rays--from Light emitting light. Christian Science is the new-old Christianity, that which was and is the revelation of divine Love.

I still hear the harvest song of the Redeemer awakening the nations, causing man to love his enemies; because "blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake."

The ideals of primitive Christianity are nigh, even at our door. Truth is not lost in the mists of remoteness or the barbarisms of spiritless codes. The right ideal is not buried, but has risen higher to our mortal sense, and having overcome death and the grave, wrapped in a pure winding-sheet, it sitteth beside the sepulchre in angel form, saying unto us, "Life is God; and our ideal of God has risen above the sod to declare His omnipotence."

There is too much animal courage in society and not sufficient moral courage. Christians must take up arms against error at home and abroad. They must grapple with sin in themselves and in others, and continue this warfare until they have finished their course. If they keep the faith, they will have the crown of rejoicing.

Christian experience teaches faith in the right and disbelief in the wrong. It bids us work the more earnestly in times of persecution, because then our labor is more needed. Great is the reward of self-sacrifice, though we may never receive it in this world.

History is full of records of suffering. "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church." Mortals try in vain to slay Truth with the steel or the stake, but error falls only before the sword of Spirit. Martyrs are the human links which connect one stage with another in the history of religion. They are earth's luminaries, which serve to cleanse and rarefy the atmosphere of material sense and to permeate humanity with purer ideals. Consciousness of right-doing brings its own reward; but not amid the smoke of battle is merit seen and appreciated by lookers-on.

Truth's immortal idea is sweeping down the centuries, gathering beneath its wings the sick and sinning. My weary hope tries to realize that happy day, when man shall recognize the Science of Christ and love his neighbor as himself,--when he shall realize God's omnipotence and the healing power of the divine Love in what it has done and is doing for mankind. The promises will be fulfilled. The time for the reappearing of the divine healing is throughout all time; and whosoever layeth his earthly all on the altar of divine Science, drinketh of Christ's cup now, and is endued with the spirit and power of Christian healing.

Humanity advances slowly out of sinning sense into spiritual understanding; unwillingness to learn all things rightly, binds Christendom with chains.

Love will finally mark the hour of harmony, and spiritualization will follow, for Love is Spirit. Before error is wholly destroyed, there will be interruptions of the general material routine. Earth will become dreary and desolate, but summer and winter, seedtime and harvest (though in changed forms), will continue unto the end,--until the final spiritualization of all things. "The darkest hour precedes the dawn."

This material world is even now becoming the arena for conflicting forces. On one side there will be discord and dismay; on the other side there will be Science and peace. The breaking up of material beliefs may seem to be famine and pestilence, want and woe, sin, sickness, and death, which assume new phases until their nothingness appears. These disturbances will continue until the end of error, when all discord will be swallowed up in spiritual Truth.

Mortal error will vanish in a moral chemicalization. This mental fermentation has begun, and will continue until all errors of belief yield to understanding. Belief is changeable, but spiritual understanding is changeless.

As this consummation draws nearer, he who has shaped his course in accordance with divine Science will endure to the end. As material knowledge diminishes and spiritual understanding increases, real objects will be apprehended mentally instead of materially.

During this final conflict, wicked minds will endeavor to find means by which to accomplish more evil; but those who discern Christian Science will hold crime in check. They will aid in the ejection of error. They will maintain law and order, and cheerfully await the certainty of ultimate perfection.

The more destructive matter becomes, the more its nothingness will appear, until matter reaches its mortal zenith in illusion and forever disappears. The nearer a false belief approaches truth without passing the boundary where, having been destroyed by divine Love, it ceases to be even an illusion, the riper it becomes for destruction. The more material the belief, the more obvious its error, until divine Spirit, supreme in its domain, dominates all matter, and man is found in the likeness of Spirit, his original being.

Christian Science, properly understood, would disabuse the human mind of material beliefs which war against spiritual facts; and these material beliefs must be denied and cast out to make place for truth.

Not materially but spiritually we know Him as divine Mind, as Life, Truth, and Love. We shall obey and adore in proportion as we apprehend the divine nature and love Him understandingly, warring no more over the corporeality, but rejoicing in the affluence of our God. Religion will then be of the heart and not of the head. Mankind will no longer be tyrannical and proscriptive from lack of love,--straining out gnats and swallowing camels.

If there is any mystery in Christian healing, it is the mystery which godliness always presents to the ungodly,--the mystery always arising from ignorance of the laws of eternal and unerring Mind.

Other methods undertake to oppose error with error, and thus they increase the antagonism of one form of matter towards other forms of matter or error, and the warfare between Spirit and the flesh goes on. By this antagonism mortal mind must continually weaken its own assumed power.

The power of God brings deliverance to the captive. No power can withstand divine Love. What is this supposed power, which opposes itself to God? Whence cometh it? What is it that binds man with iron shackles to sin, sickness, and death? Whatever enslaves man is opposed to the divine government. Truth makes man free.

You may know when first Truth leads by the fewness and faithfulness of its followers. Thus it is that the march of time bears onward freedom's banner. The powers of this world will fight, and will command their sentinels not to let truth pass the guard until it subscribes to their systems; but Science, heeding not the pointed bayonet, marches on. There is always some tumult, but there is a rallying to truth's standard.

The history of our country, like all history, illustrates the might of Mind, and shows human power to be proportionate to its embodiment of right thinking. A few immortal sentences, breathing the omnipotence of divine justice, have been potent to break despotic fetters and abolish the whipping-post and slave market; but oppression neither went down in blood, nor did the breath of freedom come from the cannon's mouth. Love is the liberator.

Legally to abolish unpaid servitude in the United States was hard; but the abolition of mental slavery is a more difficult task. The despotic tendencies, inherent in mortal mind and always germinating in new forms of tyranny, must be rooted out through the action of the divine Mind.

Men and women of all climes and races are still in bondage to material sense, ignorant how to obtain their freedom. The rights of man were vindicated in a single section and on the lowest plane of human life, when African slavery was abolished in our land. That was only prophetic of further steps towards the banishment of a world-wide slavery, found on higher planes of existence and under more subtle and depraving forms.

The voice of God in behalf of the African slave was still echoing in our land, when the voice of the herald of this new crusade sounded the keynote of universal freedom, asking a fuller acknowledgment of the rights of man as a Son of God, demanding that the fetters of sin, sickness, and death be stricken from the human mind and that its freedom be won, not through human warfare, not with bayonet and blood, but through Christ's divine Science.

If God makes sin, if good produces evil, if truth results in error, then Science and Christianity are helpless; but there are no antagonistic powers nor laws, spiritual or material, creating and governing man through perpetual warfare. God is not the author of mortal discords. Therefore we accept the conclusion that discords have only a fabulous existence, are mortal beliefs which divine Truth and Love destroy.

Self-love is more opaque than a solid body. In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error,--self-will, self-justification, and self-love,--which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death.

Ignorance must be seen and corrected before we can attain harmony. Inharmonious beliefs, which rob Mind, calling it matter, and deify their own notions, imprison themselves in what they create. They are at war with Science, and as our Master said, "If a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand."

When what we erroneously term the five physical senses are misdirected, they are simply the manifested beliefs of mortal mind, which affirm that life, substance, and intelligence are material, instead of spiritual. These false beliefs and their products constitute the flesh, and the flesh wars against Spirit.

When the divine precepts are understood, they unfold the foundation of fellowship, in which one mind is not at war with another, but all have one Spirit, God, one intelligent source, in accordance with the Scriptural command: "Let this Mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." Man and his Maker are correlated in divine Science, and real consciousness is cognizant only of the things of God.

The suppositional warfare between truth and error is only the mental conflict between the evidence of the spiritual senses and the testimony of the material senses, and this warfare between the Spirit and flesh will settle all questions through faith in and the understanding of divine Love.

When the last mortal fault is destroyed, then the final trump will sound which will end the battle of Truth with error and mortality; "but of that day and hour, knoweth no man.

Jesus represented Christ, the true idea of God. Hence the warfare between this spiritual idea and perfunctory religion, between spiritual clear-sightedness and the blindness of popular belief, which led to the conclusion that the spiritual idea could be killed by crucifying the flesh. The Christ-idea, or the Christ-man, rose higher to human view because of the crucifixion, and thus proved that Truth was the master of death. Christ presents the indestructible man, whom Spirit creates, constitutes, and governs. Christ illustrates that blending with God, his divine Principle, which gives man dominion over all the earth.

Be watchful, sober, and vigilant. The way is straight and narrow, which leads to the understanding that God is the only Life. It is a warfare with the flesh, in which we must conquer sin, sickness, and death, either here or hereafter,--certainly before we can reach the goal of Spirit, or life in God.

The divine Principle of the First Commandment bases the Science of being, by which man demonstrates health, holiness, and life eternal. One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations; constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the Scripture, "Love thy neighbor as thyself;" annihilates pagan and Christian idolatry,--whatever is wrong in social, civil, criminal, political, and religious codes; equalizes the sexes; annuls the curse on man, and leaves nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed.

It should be thoroughly understood that all men have one Mind, one God and Father, one Life, Truth, and Love. Mankind will become perfect in proportion as this fact becomes apparent, war will cease and the true brotherhood of man will be established. Having no other gods, turning to no other but the one perfect Mind to guide him, man is the likeness of God, pure and eternal, having that Mind which was also in Christ.

"The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law,"--the law of mortal belief, at war with the facts of immortal Life, even with the spiritual law which says to the grave, "Where is thy victory?" But "when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory."

Genesis iii. 4, 5. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened; and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

This myth represents error as always asserting its superiority over truth, giving the lie to divine Science and saying, through the material senses: "I can open your eyes. I can do what God has not done for you. Bow down to me and have another god. Only admit that I am real, that sin and sense are more pleasant to the eyes than spiritual Life, more to be desired than Truth, and I shall know you, and you will be mine." Thus Spirit and flesh war.

Is Life sustained by matter or by Spirit? Certainly not by both, since flesh wars against Spirit and the corporeal senses can take no cognizance of Spirit.

Genesis iii. 14, 15. And the Lord God [Jehovah] said unto the serpent, . . . I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

This prophecy has been fulfilled. The Son of the Virgin-mother unfolded the remedy for Adam, or error; and the Apostle Paul explains this warfare between the idea of divine power, which Jesus presented, and mythological material intelligence called energy and opposed to Spirit.

Paul says in his epistle to the Romans: "The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the spirit of God dwell in you."

In divine Science, the material man is shut out from the presence of God. The five corporeal senses cannot take cognizance of Spirit. They cannot come into His presence, and must dwell in dreamland, until mortals arrive at the understanding that material life, with all its sin, sickness, and death, is an illusion, against which divine Science is engaged in a warfare of extermination.

The Revelator speaks of Jesus as the Lamb of God and of the dragon as warring against innocence. Since Jesus must have been tempted in all points, he, the immaculate, met and conquered sin in every form. The brutal barbarity of his foes could emanate from no source except the highest degree of human depravity. Jesus "opened not his mouth." Until the majesty of Truth should be demonstrated in divine Science, the spiritual idea was arraigned before the tribunal of so-called mortal mind, which was unloosed in order that the false claim of mind in matter might uncover its own crime of defying immortal Mind.

From Genesis to the Apocalypse, sin, sickness, and death, envy, hatred, and revenge,--all evil,--are typified by a serpent, or animal subtlety. Jesus said, quoting a line from the Psalms, "They hated me without a cause." The serpent is perpetually close upon the heel of harmony. From the beginning to the end, the serpent pursues with hatred the spiritual idea. In Genesis, this allegorical, talking serpent typifies mortal mind, "more subtle than any beast of the field." In the Apocalypse, when nearing its doom, this evil increases and becomes the great red dragon, swollen with sin, inflamed with war against spirituality, and ripe for destruction. It is full of lust and hate, loathing the brightness of divine glory.

As the children of Israel were guided triumphantly through the Red Sea, the dark ebbing and flowing tides of human fear,--as they were led through the wilderness, walking wearily through the great desert of human hopes, and anticipating the promised joy,--so shall the spiritual idea guide all right desires in their passage from sense to Soul, from a material sense of existence to the spiritual, up to the glory prepared for them who love God.

The Old Testament assigns to the angels, God's divine messages, different offices. Michael's characteristic is spiritual strength. He leads the hosts of heaven against the power of sin, Satan, and fights the holy wars. Gabriel has the more quiet task of imparting a sense of the ever-presence of ministering Love. These angels deliver us from the depths. Truth and Love come nearer in the hour of woe, when strong faith or spiritual strength wrestles and prevails through the understanding of God. The Gabriel of His presence has no contests. To infinite, ever-present Love, all is Love, and there is no error, no sin, sickness, nor death. Against Love, the dragon warreth not long, for he is killed by the divine Principle. Truth and Love prevail against the dragon because the dragon cannot war with them. Thus endeth the conflict between the flesh and Spirit.

That false claim--that ancient belief, that old serpent whose name is devil (evil), claiming that there is intelligence in matter either to benefit or to injure men--is pure delusion, the red dragon; and it is cast out by Christ, Truth, the spiritual idea, and so proved to be powerless. The words "cast unto the earth" show the dragon to be nothingness, dust to dust; and therefore, in his pretence of being a talker, he must be a lie from the beginning. His angels, or messages, are cast out with their author. The beast and the false prophets are lust and hypocrisy. These wolves in sheep's clothing are detected and killed by innocence, the Lamb of Love.

Divine Science shows how the Lamb slays the wolf. Innocence and Truth overcome guilt and error. Ever since the foundation of the world, ever since error would establish material belief, evil has tried to slay the Lamb; but Science is able to destroy this lie, called evil. The twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse typifies the divine method of warfare in Science, and the glorious results of this warfare. The following chapters depict the fatal effects of trying to meet error with error. The narrative follows the order used in Genesis. In Genesis, first the true method of creation is set forth and then the false. Here, also, the Revelator first exhibits the true warfare and then the false.

Revelation xii. 10-12. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.

For victory over a single sin, we give thanks and magnify the Lord of Hosts. What shall we say of the mighty conquest over all sin? A louder song, sweeter than has ever before reached high heaven, now rises clearer and nearer to the great heart of Christ; for the accuser is not there, and Love sends forth her primal and everlasting strain. Self-abnegation, by which we lay down all for Truth, or Christ, in our warfare against error, is a rule in Christian Science. This rule clearly interprets God as divine Principle,--as Life, represented by the Father; as Truth, represented by the Son; as Love, represented by the Mother. Every mortal at some period, here or hereafter, must grapple with and overcome the mortal belief in a power opposed to God.

The Scripture, "Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many," is literally fulfilled, when we are conscious of the supremacy of Truth, by which the nothingness of error is seen; and we know that the nothingness of error is in proportion to its wickedness. He that touches the hem of Christ's robe and masters his mortal beliefs, animality, and hate, rejoices in the proof of healing,--in a sweet and certain sense that God is Love.

PRAYER FOR COUNTRY AND CHURCH

Pray for the prosperity of our country, and for her victory under arms; that justice, mercy, and peace continue to characterize her government, and that they shall rule all nations. Pray that the divine presence may still guide and bless our chief magistrate, those associated with his executive trust, and our national judiciary; give to our congress wisdom, and uphold our nation with the right arm of His righteousness.

In your peaceful homes remember our brave soldiers, whether in camp or in battle. [1] Oh, may their love of country, and their faithful service thereof, be unto them life-preservers! May the divine Love succor and protect them, as at Manila, where brave men, led by the dauntless Dewey, and shielded by the power that saved them, sailed victoriously through the jaws of death and blotted out the Spanish squadron.

[1] This refers to the war between United States and Spain for the liberty of Cuba.

Great occasion have we to rejoice that our nation, which fed her starving foe,--already murdering her peaceful seamen and destroying millions of her money,--will be as formidable in war as she has been compassionate in peace.

May our Father-Mother God, who in times past hath spread for us a table in the wilderness and "in the midst of our enemies," establish us in the most holy faith, plant our feet firmly on Truth, the rock of Christ, the "substance of things hoped for"--and fill us with the life and understanding of God, and good will towards men.

MARY BAKER EDDY

Entire chapter on "Peace and War"

[Boston Herald, March, 1898]

OTHER WAYS THAN BY WAR

In reply to your question, "Should difficulties between the United States and Spain be settled peacefully by statesmanship and diplomacy, in a way honorable and satisfactory to both nations?" I will say I can see no other way of settling difficulties between individuals and nations than by means of their wholesome tribunals, equitable laws, and sound, well-kept treaties.

A bullet in a man's heart never settles the question of his life. The mental animus goes on, and urges that the answer to the sublime question as to man's life shall come from God and that its adjustment shall be according to His laws. The characters and lives of men determine the peace, prosperity, and life of nations. Killing men is not consonant with the higher law whereby wrong and injustice are righted and exterminated.

Whatever weighs in the eternal scale of equity and mercy tips the beam on the right side, where the immortal words and deeds of men alone can settle all questions amicably and satisfactorily. But if our nation's rights or honor were seized, every citizen would be a soldier and woman would be armed with power girt for the hour.

To coincide with God's government is the proper incentive to the action of all nations. If His purpose for peace is to be subserved by the battle's plan or by the intervention of the United States, so that the Cubans may learn to make war no more, this means and end will be accomplished.

The government of divine Love is supreme. Love rules the universe, and its edict hath gone forth: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," and "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Let us have the molecule of faith that removes mountains,--faith armed with the understanding of Love, as in divine Science, where right reigneth. The revered President and Congress of our favored land are in God's hands.

[Boston Globe, December, 1904]

HOW STRIFE MAY BE STILLED

Follow that which is good.

A Japanese may believe in a heaven for him who dies in defence of his country, but the steadying, elevating power of civilization destroys such illusions and should overcome evil with good.

Nothing is gained by fighting, but much is lost.

Peace is the promise and reward of rightness. Governments have no right to engraft into civilization the burlesque of uncivil economics. War is in itself an evil, barbarous, devilish. Victory in error is defeat in Truth. War is not in the domain of good; war weakens power and must finally fall, pierced by its own sword.

The Principle of all power is God, and God is Love. Whatever brings into human thought or action an element opposed to Love, is never requisite, never a necessity, and is not sanctioned by the law of God, the law of Love. The Founder of Christianity said: "My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you."

Christian Science reinforces Christ's sayings and doings. The Principle of Christian Science demonstrates peace. Christianity is the chain of scientific being reappearing in all ages, maintaining its obvious correspondence with the Scriptures and uniting all periods in the design of God. The First Commandment in the Hebrew Decalogue--"Thou shalt have no other gods before me"--obeyed, is sufficient to still all strife. God is the divine Mind. Hence the sequence: Had all peoples one Mind, peace would reign.

God is Father, infinite, and this great truth, when understood in its divine metaphysics, will establish the brotherhood of man, end wars, and demonstrate "on earth peace, good will toward men."

[Christian Science Sentinel, June 17, 1905]

THE PRAYER FOR PEACE

Dearly Beloved:--I request that every member of The Mother Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, pray each day for the amicable settlement of the war between Russia and Japan; and pray that God bless that great nation and those islands of the sea with peace and prosperity.

MARY BAKER EDDY

Pleasant View, Concord, N. H., June 13, 1905

REV. MARY BAKER EDDY,

Pleasant View, Concord, N. H.

Beloved Leader:--We acknowledge with rejoicing the receipt of your message, which again gives assurance of your watchful care and guidance in our behalf and of your loving solicitude for the welfare of the nations and the peaceful tranquillity of the race. We rejoice also in this new reminder from you that all the things which make for the establishment of a universal, loving brotherhood on earth may be accomplished through the righteous prayer which availeth much.

WILLIAM B. JOHNSON, Clerk

Boston, Mass., June 13, 1905

[Christian Science Sentinel, July 1, 1905]

"HEAR, O ISRAEL: THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD"

I now request that the members of my church cease special prayer for the peace of nations, and cease in full faith that God does not hear our prayers only because of oft speaking, but that He will bless all the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay His hand nor say unto Him, What doest Thou? Out of His allness He must bless all with His own truth and love.

MARY BAKER EDDY

Pleasant View, Concord, N. H., June 27, 1905

[Christian Science Sentinel, July 22, 1905]

AN EXPLANATION

In no way nor manner did I request my church to cease praying for the peace of nations, but simply to pause in special prayer for peace. And why this asking? Because a spiritual foresight of the nations' drama presented itself and awakened a wiser want, even to know how to pray other than the daily prayer of my church,--"Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven."

I cited, as our present need, faith in God's disposal of events. Faith full-fledged, soaring to the Horeb height, brings blessings infinite, and the spirit of this orison is the fruit of rightness,--"on earth peace, good will toward men." On this basis the brotherhood of all peoples is established; namely, one God, one Mind, and "Love thy neighbor as thyself," the basis on which and by which the infinite God, good, the Father-Mother Love, is ours and we are His in divine Science.

[Boston Globe, August, 1905]

PRACTISE THE GOLDEN RULE

[Telegram]

"Official announcement of peace between Russia and Japan seems to offer an appropriate occasion for the expression of congratulations and views by representative persons. Will you do us the kindness to wire a sentiment on some phase of the subject, on the ending of the war, the effect on the two parties to the treaty of Portsmouth, the influence which President Roosevelt has exerted for peace, or the advancement of the cause of arbitration."

Mrs. Eddy's Reply

TO THE EDITOR OF THE Globe:

War will end when nations are ripe for progress. The treaty of Portsmouth is not an executive power, although its purpose is good will towards men. The government of a nation is its peace maker or breaker.

I believe strictly in the Monroe doctrine, in our Constitution, and in the laws of God. While I admire the faith and friendship of our chief executive in and for all nations, my hope must still rest in God, and the Scriptural injunction,--"Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth."

The Douma recently adopted in Russia is no uncertain ray of dawn. Through the wholesome chastisements of Love, nations are helped onward towards justice, righteousness, and peace, which are the landmarks of prosperity. In order to apprehend more, we must practise what we already know of the Golden Rule, which is to all mankind a light emitting light.

MARY BAKER EDDY

MRS. EDDY AND THE PEACE MOVEMENT

MR. HAYNE DAVIS, American Secretary,

International Conciliation Committee,

542 Fifth Avenue, New York City

Dear Mr. Davis:--Deeply do I thank you for the interest you manifest in the success of the Association for International Conciliation. It is of paramount importance to every son and daughter of all nations under the sunlight of the law and gospel.

May God guide and prosper ever this good endeavor.

Most truly yours,

MARY BAKER EDDY

Pleasant View, Concord, N. H., April 3, 1907

MRS. EDDY'S ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF APPOINTMENT AS FONDATEUR OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR INTERNATIONAL CONCILIATION

FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST, NEW YORK CITY, MR. JOHN D. HIGGINS, Clerk

My Beloved Brethren:--Your appointment of me as Fondateur of the Association for International Conciliation is most gracious.

To aid in this holy purpose is the leading impetus of my life. Many years have I prayed and labored for the consummation of "on earth peace, good will toward men." May the fruits of said grand Association, pregnant with peace, find their birthright in divine Science.

Right thoughts and deeds are the sovereign remedies for all earth's woe. Sin is its own enemy. Right has its recompense, even though it be betrayed. Wrong may be a man's highest idea of right until his grasp of goodness grows stronger. It is always safe to be just.

When pride, self, and human reason reign, injustice is rampant.

Individuals, as nations, unite harmoniously on the basis of justice, and this is accomplished when self is lost in Love--or God's own plan of salvation. "To do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly" is the standard of Christian Science.

Human law is right only as it patterns the divine. Consolation and peace are based on the enlightened sense of God's government.

Lured by fame, pride, or gold, success is dangerous, but the choice of folly never fastens on the good or the great. Because of my rediscovery of Christian Science, and honest efforts (however meagre) to help human purpose and peoples, you may have accorded me more than is deserved,--but 'tis sweet to be remembered. Lovingly yours,

MARY BAKER EDDY

Pleasant View, Concord, N. H., April 22, 1907

BibleTexts.com note: It should be noted that The 1907 "Promotion of Peace" By-Law challenged the thinking of Mother Church members who had united outside the church organization to form the International Conciliation Committee, to which she had been honorarily named as Fondateur. (See My 282:17-30.) Robert Peel commented regarding the 1907 "Promotion of Peace" By-Law, which was later renamed "Joining Another Society:"

…Another bylaw (section 16) was added as a result of Mrs. Eddy's experience with Hayne Davis of the Association for International Conciliation… This … bylaw, prescriptive as well as proscriptive, stressed the need to promote peace and the general welfare of mankind "by demonstrating the rules of divine Love" rather than by joining societies not specified in the Manual. (Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977, page 456)

That By-Law first appeared in 1907 and its 1908 and final version read:

Joining Another Society. SECT. 16. It shall be the duty of the members of The Mother Church and of its branches to promote peace on earth and good will toward men; but members of The Mother Church shall not hereafter become members of other societies except those specified in The Mother Church Manual, and they shall strive to promote the welfare of all mankind by demonstrating the rules of divine Love. (Man 45:4)

Earlier in 1904 Mrs. Eddy had written regarding similar wording that had appeared in the "Church Organizations Ample" By-Law, which at that time was in Article XXVI:

I beg to inform my beloved members of the Mother Church that the By-law in Article XXVI. of its Manual does not require members of benevolent and progressive organizations, such as the Free Masons, Odd Fellows, temperance societies, and those of similar cult, to resign this membership. It specifies in plain English that after individuals become members of our Church they shall not thereafter "be made" members of clubs or other organizations not named in its Manual, and wherefore? Because our religious denomination demands the faithful attention and labor of its members in all, therapeutic, and progressive Christian work for the human race, and relies upon the adequate, scientific Source and resource therefor. (The Christian Science Journal, Volume 22, June, 1904, page 184)

In his Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority (NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977, page 226), Robert Peel comments on his conclusions about the original "Church Organizations Ample" By-Law:

Mrs. Eddy saw the Christian churches increasingly dissipating their spiritual energy in worthy endeavors of a basically secular sort - in social clubs, recreational activities, service and charitable functions which in many cases might be equally well or better performed by professional agencies. She had no quarrel with their choice of direction but was deeply concerned that the Church of Christ, Scientist, should preserve its fundamental purpose and identity. Christian Scientists might participate as much as they saw fit in civic, philanthropic, and other such activities, but they should do so as responsible individual citizens rather than as organized groups of Christian Scientists.

When Mrs. Eddy heard of a New York Christian Science Lunch Club composed of businessmen who invited prominent Christian Scientists to address them, she quickly wrote the Lathrops, who had thought the enterprise an admirable one, about the danger of Christian Science organizations separate from the church. "If you go into clubs," she admonished them, "you go out of the church in spirit." Then followed a bylaw on the subject. [The 1904 version of "Church Organizations Ample" By-Law, as quoted above.]

The ban seems to have been directed less against the individual Christian Scientist's normal participation in social or professional organizations than against the development of a constellation of self-designated Christian Science activities which would drain the movement's energies away from the sole purpose that would, in her eyes, justify its organization as a church. This purpose, as she reminded the members repeatedly, was Christian Science healing and regeneration.

For more details, browse http://www.bibletexts.com/terms/love-in-action.htm.

[Concord (N. H.) Daily Patriot]

A CORRECTION

Dear Editor:--In the issue of your good paper, the Patriot, May 21, when referring to the Memorial service of the E. E. Sturtevant Post held in my church building, it read, "It is said to be the first time in the history of the church in this country that such an event has occurred." In your next issue please correct this mistake. Since my residence in Concord, 1889, the aforesaid Memorial service has been held annually in some church in Concord, N. H.

When the Veterans indicated their desire to assemble in my church building, I consented thereto only as other churches had done. But here let me say that I am absolutely and religiously opposed to war, whereas I do believe implicitly in the full efficacy of divine Love to conciliate by arbitration all quarrels between nations and peoples.

MARY BAKER EDDY

Pleasant View, Concord, N. H., May 28, 1907

TO A STUDENT

Dear Student:--Please accept my thanks for your kind invitation, on behalf of the Civic League of San Francisco, to attend the Industrial Peace Conference, and accept my hearty congratulations. I cannot spare the time requisite to meet with you; but I rejoice with you in all your wise endeavors for industrial, civic, and national peace. Whatever adorns Christianity crowns the great purposes of life and demonstrates the Science of being. Bloodshed, war, and oppression belong to the darker ages, and shall be relegated to oblivion.

It is a matter for rejoicing that the best, bravest, most cultured men and women of this period unite with us in the grand object embodied in the Association for International Conciliation. In Revelation 2 : 26, St. John says: "And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations." In the words of St. Paul, I repeat:--

"And they neither found me in the temple disputing with any man, neither raising up the people, neither in the synagogues, nor in the city: neither can they prove the things whereof they now accuse me. But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets."

Most sincerely yours,

MARY BAKER EDDY

Pleasant View, Concord, N. H.

[The Christian Science Journal, May, 1908]

WAR

For many years I have prayed daily that there be no more war, no more barbarous slaughtering of our fellow-beings; prayed that all the peoples on earth and the islands of the sea have one God, one Mind; love God supremely, and love their neighbor as themselves.

National disagreements can be, and should be, arbitrated wisely, fairly; and fully settled.

It is unquestionable, however, that at this hour the armament of navies is necessary, for the purpose of preventing war and preserving peace among nations.

From its inception in 1898, immediately following the Spanish-American War, the [Christian Science] Sentinel devoted space to the consideration of public affairs, a function which would later be carried on more professionally by The Christian Science Monitor. At the same time, Mrs. Eddy herself was giving thought to public issues which the pressing needs of the movement had earlier crowded into the background of her concern, and with characteristic realism she was learning from events as they occurred. This was particularly evident in regard to the question of war and peace.

She had already in Science and Health drawn a relevant distinction between the Jehovah of history and the universal God glimpsed by the Hebrew prophets. "The Jewish tribal Jehovah," she wrote, "was a man-projected God, liable to wrath, repentance, and human changeableness." As she saw it, that terrible though majestic figure still cast its shadow over the God of infinite compassion who had come to light through later revelation:

The Jewish conception of God, as Yawah, Jehovah, or only a mighty hero and king, has not quite given place to the true knowledge of God.... [S&H 133:29-31]

In that name of Jehovah, the true idea of God seems almost lost. God becomes "a man of war," a tribal god to be worshipped rather than Love, the divine Principle to be lived and loved. [S&H 524:8-12]

To live this principled Love individually, she [Mrs. Eddy] taught, was to follow in Jesus' footsteps. To live it collectively would require the total effort of the whole Church of Christ...

...In the year of our Lord 1898 the human scene provided much that was self-evidently and even appallingly wrong -- much that needed changing, uncovering, punishing, destroying, challenging rescuing, healing... Mrs. Eddy herself was still far from clear as to how to relate her spiritual ideal to the political exigencies of the moment.

On March 20, when the popular clamor for war with Spain was mounting, the Boston Herald published a statement by her, "Other Ways Than By War," which contained such unequivocally antiwar statements as, "Killing men is not consonant with the higher law whereby wrong and injustice are righted and exterminated," then concluded somewhat ambiguously, "But if our nations's rights or honor were seized, every citizen would be a soldier and woman would be armed with power girt for the hour."

That Mrs. Eddy did not intend this last sentence to be taken quite so literally as many of her followers subsequently did is suggested by a letter she sent to Mrs. McKinley at the White House ten days later. No greater glory could crown any nation, she wrote the First Lady, than to rebuke but also forgive "so foul a crime" as the blowing up of the American cruiser Maine in Havana Harbor. It was her custom, she added, to admonish Christian Scientists in their efforts to defeat repressive laws never to take the sword, metaphorically speaking, but always endeavor to overcome evil with good.

As the war fever mounted, she instructed the Board of Directors on April 14 to pray twice each day that the members of Congress "see the error of making war with Spain and the wisdom of settling this question amicably." To Albert Metcalf, who had written to the President opposing the war, she wrote on the same day:

I highly approve your note to President McKinley. ... I am astonished at the attitude of Congress! Our Senator Chandler is a bristling man at best and Galliger seems obtuse on this question of war. Our nation never did so blindly before meddle with Spanish America.

Two days later, however, she sent a further message to the Boston Herald which read in part:

In order to close the multitudinous questions addressed to me on the subject of the war-cloud and the sober second thought of our chief magistrate, President McKinley, I will say, in my poor opinion it had been better that our friendly nation in the first instance had wiped her hands of Cuba altogether....

To coincide with God's government is the proper incentive to the action of all nations. If His purpose for peace is to be subserved by the battle's plan, or the intervention of the United States, whereby Cubans shall learn to make war no more, this means and ends will be accomplished.

[POSTWAR: Spanish-American War and "economic imperialism]

...On July 3 the war in Cuba was all but ended by a naval battle off Santiago...

Meanwhile, The Christian Science Journal and the new Sentinel gave evidence of the learning process that was going on. In a lengthy editorial in the Journal of June, 1898, [Judge Septimus J.] Hanna pointed out that there was no biblical warrant for war if the the spiritual meaning of Scripture, as opposed to the literal, was understood. Recalling Moses' song of victory after the drowning of Pharaoh's army, he wrote:

These are songs of exultation and victory that would quite adequately express the exuberance of feeling now prevalent in our country over Dewey's great victory at the Philippine Islands...

But the later prophets, and above all, the New Testament had a clear perception of "the non-divinity of war," Hanna continued. Either Jesus meant what he said or he didn't... Yet all human action was relative, and some beliefs were better than others -- a position summed up by Mrs. Eddy ten years before in her statement: "Wisdom in human action begins with what is nearest right under the circumstances, and thence achieves the absolute." And on that basis Hanna tentatively defended the United States action as perhaps "the most effective means" of righting Cuba's wrongs that could be expected within the "present aggregate understanding" of the United States.

The editorial was an earnest if tortuous effort to think out a problem which comparatively few Christians at that time were willing to tackle. However, with the war drawing to a rapid close and with his weakness for an overliteral interpretation of prophetic Scripture, Hanna backtracked somewhat in the next issue and suggested that there was some ground for believing that "the war is in line with Bibical prophecy."...

This cheerful assurance did not last long, as it became increasingly evident that the baldest kind of power politics and economic imperialism was involved in the Philippine adventure...

Mrs. Eddy, during this time, was observing and thinking. In her Communion message to The Mother Church for 1899 she wrote, "I reluctantly foresee great danger threatening our nation, -- imperialism, monopoly, and a lax system of religion." However, she was careful at all times not to identify herself with a particular political philosphy or to turn her personal opinions on social and political questions into articles of Christian Science faith...

...In the years immediately following the Spanish-American War, .. Mrs. Eddy's views on public affairs were evolving as she observed the course of events. In her 1899 message she wrote:

Lean not too much on your Leader. Trust God to direct your steps. Accept my counsel and teachings only as they include the spirit and the letter of the Ten Commandments, the Beatitutdes, and the teachings and example of Christ Jesus.

Among similar statements by her in the next few years was one in her message to The Mother church for 1902 which related her injunction to a brief review of events during the preceding years:

Our nation's forward step was the inauguration of home rule in Cuba, -- our military forces withdrawing, and leaving her in the enjoyment of self-govenment under improved laws....

It does not follow that power must mature into oppression... Competition in commerce, deceit in councils, dishonor in nations, dishonesty in trusts, begins with "Who shall be greatest?" I again repeat, Follow your Leader, only so far as she follows Christ.

If the Dowager Empress could hold her nation, there would be no danger in teaching Christian Science in her country. But a war on religion in China would be more fatal than the Boxers' rebellion. Silent prayer in and for a heathen nation is just what is needed. But to teach and to demonstrate Christian Science before the minds of the people are prepared for it, and when the laws are against it, is fraught with danger.

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

• Source1: http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.htm
• Source2: http://www.quotationreference.com/quotefinder.php?strt=1&subj=Hermann+Goering&byax=1&lr=
• Source3: http://www.answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=235519

The men [Jesus' disciples] who were bidden to love their enemies were living in enemy-occupied territory, where resentment was natural and provocation frequent. They were not just to submit to aggression, but to rob it of its sting by voluntarily going beyond its demands. To those who believe in standing up for their individual or national rights this teaching has always seemed idealistic, if not actually immoral. But those who are concerned with the victory of the kingdom of God over the kingdom of Satan can see that it is the only realism. He who retaliates thinks that he is manfully resisting aggression; in fact, he is making an unconditional surrender to evil. Where before there was one under the control of evil, now there are two. Evil propagates by contagion. It can be contained and defeated only when hatred, insult, and injury are absorbed and neutralized by Love. (Saint Luke, by G.B. Caird, Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963, "The Law of Love, Commentary on Luke 6:27-38" pages 103-105. For a larger excerpt, see http://www.bibletexts.com/terms/agape-c.htm.)

What would happen if, instead of only a relatively few persons believing (as at the present), the entire empire of Rome believed? They would pray to the Word, who of old said to the Hebrews, when they were pursued by the Egyptians: "The Lord will fight for you, and you will hold your peace." And if all the Romans united in prayer with one accord, they would be able to put to flight far more enemies than those who were defeated by the prayer of Moses... However, He had made the fulfillment of His promises dependent on certain conditions -- namely, that they would observe and live according to His Law... But if all the Romans embraced the Christian faith (according to the supposition of Celsus), they would overcome their enemies when they prayed. Or rather, they would not war at all. For they would be guarded by that divine power that promised to save five entire cities for the sake of fifty righteous persons. Men of God are assuredly the salt of the earth. They preserve the order of the world. And society is held together as long as the salt is uncorrupted... We enjoy a wonderful peace, trusting in the protection of Him who said, "Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world." (c. 248), ANF 4.666.

In the next place, Celsus urges us "to help the king with all our might, to labor with him in the maintenance of justice, and to fight for him. Or if he demands it, to fight under him or lead an army along with him." To this, our answer is that we do give help to kings when needed. But this is, so to speak, a divine help, "putting on the whole armor of God." And we do this in obedience to the commandment of the apostle: "I exhort, therefore, that first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be made for all men; for kings, and for all who are in authority." So the more anyone excels in godliness, the more effective the help is that he renders to kings. This is a greater help than what is given by soldiers who go forth to fight and kill as many of the enemy as they can. And to those enemies of our faith who demand us to bear arms for the commonwealth and to slay men, we reply: "Do not those who are the priests at certain shrines... keep their hands free from blood, so that they may offer the appointed sacrifices to your gods with unstained hands that are free from human blood? Even when war is upon you, you never enlist the priests in the army. If, then, that is a praiseworthy custom, how much more so that when others are engaged in battle Christians engage as the priests and ministers of God, keeping their hands pure. For they wrestle in prayers to God on behalf of those who are fighting in a righteous cause, and for the king who reigns righteously. They pray that whatever is opposed to those who act righteously may be destroyed.

Our prayers defeat all demons who stir up war. Those demons also lead persons to violate their oaths and to disturb the peace. Accordingly, in this way, we are much more helpful to the kings than those who go into the field to fight for them. And we do take our part in public affairs when we join self-denying exercises to our righteous prayers and meditations, which teach us to despise pleasures and not to be led away by them. So none fight better for the king than we do. Indeed, we do not fight under him even if he demands it. Yet, we fight on his behalf, forming a special army -- an army of godliness-by offering our prayers to God. And if Celsus would have us "lead armies in defense of our country," let him know that we do this too. And we do not do it for the purpose of being seen by men or for vainglory. For in secret, and in our own hearts, our prayers ascend on behalf of our fellow-citizens, as from priests. And Christians are benefactors of their country more than others. For they train up citizens and inculcate piety to the Supreme Being. And they promote to a divine and heavenly city those whose lives in the smallest cities have been good and worthy. (Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 4, pages 667-668)