Bells of joy, bells of liberty, bells of praise and of thanksgiving, bells of triumph and of victory, have rung out during the year now closing and have rung in a promised era of peace and progress, with a sound and a meaning for all Christendom unique in the history of mankind. They aroused glad response in every heart, a rapture of relief too deep to voice in human language. Sensible as are all Christian Scientists that the cessation of physical hostilities did not represent the destruction of the sum total of human error, still they recognize it to be a great and wonderful milestone on the world's highroad to the kingdom of heaven, and that it does represent the condition of thought which our Leader designated on page 568 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" when she wrote, "For victory over a single sin, we give thanks and magnify the Lord of Hosts."
And yet in the very midst of this thanksgiving there were suggestions of fear!—and of what? Mortal mind argued that during the period of reconstruction now upon us, and the change from conditions of war to those of peace, there would be lack of employment, lack of food, lack of opportunity, and the general stoppage of individual activity and good. We verily believe, however, that this mighty victory of moral force over material might, gained by the allied forces in the workshops and on the battle field, this "victory beyond conquest," as one clergyman expressed it in a Thanksgiving sermon, is the proof positive that the Christ, Truth, has been and is ever present with us, and is reappearing among men in this momentous and universal hour, in a way that all can understand, revere, and hail with promise and hope. Our eyes are still blinded with the mists of the Adam-dream, or we would receive this reappearing of the Christ with such pure, overflowing gratitude that all fear would be completely flooded out with inrushing streams of glorious light and lasting joy,—lasting because it would be joy spiritually understood.
If we look back to the story of the resurrection as recorded in the twenty-first chapter of John's gospel, we shall see that the same conditions of thought obtained among the little circle of the disciples in those early times as are seemingly engulfing the governments and public marts of the world to-day. When Jesus the Christ stood on the shore of the lake of Tiberias, having conquered death and hell, his disciples were apparently absorbed in the question of making a living. They were thinking not at all of the best means of establishing their Master's teaching, or of strengthening one another in his beautiful words and works, but they were intent on their old material occupation of catching fish, and we may be quite certain that they did this because they were terrified of being out of employment, and had quite forgotten that Jesus had promised that he would make them "fishers of men." They were not watching for the reappearing of the Christ, and consequently they had toiled all night in matter and had caught nothing.
