WHEN Christ Jesus counseled his little band of followers that they "fear not;" when he said, "Lo, I am with you alway," he no doubt intended to comfort them at a time when they were overwhelmed with the thought of what it would mean to face the world without him. He was moved with that compassion which ever led him to enter so sympathetically into the heart-struggle of humanity. But it is probable that the strengthening of their hope and courage did not compass all his purpose, or measure the full meaning of his assuring words, since they enunciate a law and order of thought and life which is of no less vital significance to us than it was to the early Christians.
The world's sense of government has ever been that of coercive requirement. Law has ever been regarded as the mandate of dominating authority, and to ignore its demands was to merit and receive due punishment. Duty thus appealed to Moses, in large part, as an inhibition, which was summed up in the "thou shalt nots" of the Decalogue, and which was enforced by a penal code, so that fear inevitably became a leading incentive to action. God was thought of as having instituted a series of exactions which He honored in the infliction of sickness and death, not only upon the infractors of law, but upon all their belongings. Innocent children and beasts were to feel the stroke of His anger no less surely than wilfully sinful men and women. All the horrors of heredity had their place in the divine order, and the only virtue which could naturally result from the restrictive influence of such a sense was negative. Instead of being free and spontaneous, its morality was menial, it flavored of the lash.
The fear of God's wrath which characterized this early prophetic period of religious history, reappears in the fear of death and damnation which has characterized the theology of the Christian centuries. In no small degree the self-infliction of present experience has been thought of as a substitute for the terrifying possibilities of future experience; hence the self-compulsion and asceticism that has not yet passed. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews had, however, a very clear perception of the imperfection and inadequacy of this Mosaic concept of divine law and government. He says, "The law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered . . . make the comers thereunto perfect. . . . Wherefore when he [the Christ] cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: . . . Lo, I come ... to do thy will, O God."
The larger meaning of Christ Jesus' words begins to appear, in the light of this statement. The "I" of "Lo, I come" is the "I" of "Lo, I am with you alway." It is the ever-appearing Christ, Truth, as revealed in Christian Science, that brings freedom from all sense of law as coercive, prohibitory, or punitive. The pure man knows no "thou shlalt not commit adultery," and for the reason that he is removed from the sensual plane, with all that pertains to it. To those who are expressing the loving activities of Life "thou shalt not kill" has become entirely inapplicable. The Christ is with them; hence they "fear not," they are fulfilling the Master's counsel and call. Christian Science teaches that "error brings its own self-destruction both here and hereafter" (Science and Health, p. 77); that God has not inaugurated and does not perpetuate or legislate for evil; that he neither prescribes nor administers the punishments which pertain to its indulgence: that his only law for humanity is that enunciated by Christ Jesus, "Thou shalt love." "Lo, I am with you alway." Says our Leader, "Truth, Life, and Love are the only legitimate and eternal demands on man, and they are spiritual lawgivers, enforcing obedience through divine statutes" (Science and Health, p. 184).
Speaking of the utter inefficiency of the mortal coercive sense of law, a recent writer in the New York Evening Post has well said,—
As a foundation for human statutory law the Decalogue gave civilization a plan for its barricades against reversion, but this age is beginning to see that the teachings of the Christ were what was needed for growth. The Beatitudes and the Golden Rule are positive. They promise the imminent heaven, i.e., peace of mind, to the true; and this promise accords with our deepest intuitions and our scientific knowledge of cause and effect alike. The world that accepts the religion of Jesus will never have to learn a new one or go seeking a basis and code for a substantial morality. As for the courts, standing on the old Mosaic law and the kindred developments of later civilizations, their range of authority will be found. . . to be narrowing. . . No code of " thou shalt nots" will turn human nature betimes from reversionary tendencies.
This is an important lesson, and the world is learning it to-day as not before. After giving it abundant trial, penologists are practically unanimous in their vote for the disuse of punishment as an educative or reformatory measure. Vice and viciousness are not healed by the dungeon or the pillory, and for the reason that divine Love alone is "the liberator" (Science and Health, p. 225). The explanation of all true conquest of error in us is "Immanuel," and we "fear not" just in so far as Love's eternal presence is realized. The "reversionary tendencies" of mortal sense still need to be known for what they are and zealously guarded against. Christ Jesus' "Fear not" rebukes every disposition to look to or depend upon the procedure of mortal law for the cure of mortal ills. As Christian Scientists we need to remember that every attempt at the coercive enforcement of virtue, whether in the instance of ourselves or others, will prove as pitiful a failure to-day as it did in the early Christian centuries. We can drive neither ourselves nor our fellow-men into the kingdom of heaven. Every genuine demonstration, and there is no other, is an incident of that spiritual advance which lifts us above the plane of temptation or of want, and it is incident to that alone. It is always an illustration of that ease of Love's overcoming to which our Leader refers in the felicitous phrase, "the unlabored motion of the divine energy" (Science and Health, p. 445).
In unnumbered ministries Christ Jesus proved that effective doing, the true healing, is a spiritual doing, to which exertion does not pertain, and this for the reason that it is the doing of omnipotence. Said Jesus, "The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." Our wilful insistence and compelling effort, our struggle and strain, tell of the presence of human factors only, they do not witness to the presence of the Christ. To know God is to be able to accomplish all things, and in this knowing we cannot fear, for the "Lo, I am with you" of Christ Jesus is fulfilled.
