Mrs. Eddy's message to Christian Scientists, which appeared in the Christian Science Sentinel, September 1, 1917, under the caption "Principle and Practice," points to close scrutiny of the method of Christian Science practice, in order to detect whether our work is based upon a mere belief in divine Principle or upon a demonstrable understanding of God and of His laws. We also have in the September 15, 1917, issue of the Sentinel, the clarion call of The Christian Science Board of Directors to Christian Scientists to take up mental arms in defense and support of the campaign of Christian Science against the warring elements of seething evil, now coming to the surface in individual and collective human consciousness, and it should arouse in every heart a more fervent desire to be consecrated anew to the cause and demonstration of Christian Science.
Brave men and women in great numbers are giving themselves to the defense and establishment of a worldwide democracy and to the permanent abolishment of tyrannical autocracy, at sacrifices that challenge wonder and admiration. They who are named Christian Scientists should be as ready and as self-sacrificing in this hour of conflicting forces to defend and support the righteous cause of Christian Science, which alone can abolish hate and strife in human consciousness, redeem mankind from the thraldom of sin, disease, and death, and end war. To reach such a divinely possible consummation, Christian Scientists need the armor and equipment of "an unselfed love" (Science and Health, p. 1) which will render them immune to the poisonous sophistries and subtleties of a merely human sense of love with its mesmeric desires,—one of the most subtle of all the foes that assail the Christian Scientist, because of its insidious appeal.
Christian Scientists need to cultivate and acquire an unselfed love to be able intelligently and instantly to draw the sharp line of demarcation between the study of human metaphysics and the practice of divine metaphysics, the latter permitting no human attempt to outline God's ideas. They need a sense of love so honest in quality that they will scorn to exalt mortal personality in friend or to despise it in foe. Such love will forbid them to yield to personal ambition whether mad or mild, or to find place or power at the beck and call of human judgment, or through personal preferment or prejudice to be party to anything that would make for the enfeeblement and disintegration of branch churches, thus handicapping the beneficent movements of The Mother Church, or through any sort of material conservatism to put off the hour of demonstration of pure democracy, though an army of adversaries be arrayed against them.
