WHEN the children of Israel begged of Samuel that he would give them a king to reign over them, they gave as their reason for such a desire, "That we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles." Samuel warned them that if they insisted upon this they would eventually find themselves the servants of this king and that all they owned would become his property.
Ever since there has been a belief in a selfhood separated from God, there has been a frequent cry for a king. With a belief in the necessity for material thought-planning, mortals have had the desire to find some one to work out their problems, to fight their battles for them. Feeling their own incompetency and loath to take upon themselves any effort which would involve activity, there has been a reaching out for some one upon whom all responsibility might be placed and who might provide a ready way out of all difficulties. On the other hand, this has of course implied the necessity of sweeping to the other extreme, in that some one must be found willing to assume the role of king. Thus by attempting to govern and be governed by each other, mortals have forged their own chains and induced their own bondage and have found disappointment ever attending their efforts.
This seeking for a human king has seemed to produce two sorts of thinkers,—those who wanted others to think for them and those who have believed they could do the thinking for all men. When it is understood that such thinking is all from the basis of fallible human opinions and desires, it may be readily seen that nothing satisfactory or stable could result. More than this, the mistaken sense of kingship is associated with the belief that it is a fine thing to rule and—behold! a world, in which every man desires to be a king, since he imagines that thereby he may govern not only himself but every other man! All this has come about from the standpoint of minds many, and therefore has expressed concepts many, purposes many, wills many. These have been for the most part contradictory and antagonistic, and in consequence there have followed a mass of strange misconceptions and multiplied dissensions.
Into the midst of this confusion, Christian Science has come as the great deliverer. With its perfect understanding of what King and kingship mean, it brings the peace and calm of divine intelligence and calls upon men to awaken to the truth which will straighten out all tangles, quiet all turmoil, redeem all mistakes. It sings with the psalmist: "Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory." It proclaims with Paul that "unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever." It emphasizes the statement in our Lord's Prayer, "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory." It teaches that every man must look up to his Maker and recognize the necessity of understanding and accepting Him as King, to whom all allegiance is due, and thus find the divine Mind whose infinite intelligence and wisdom and love are the "Peace, be still" to every form of error.
In Science and Health (p. 469) we read: "The exterminator of error is the great truth that God, good, is the only Mind, and that the supposititious opposite of infinite Mind— called devil or evil—is not Mind, is not Truth, but error, without intelligence or reality. There can be but one Mind, because there is but one God; and if mortals claimed no other Mind and accepted no other, sin would be unknown." Then mortals, by accepting the fact that God, divine Mind, is the alone governor, and by depending on His government, can lose all sense of false responsibility, all fear, and need never again either govern or be governed erroneously.
Resting in God's perfect government man must reflect this divine kingliness through expressing the ability to think rightly on every subject, and thus all that concerns him will be rightly controlled. This gives man ample occupation. No responsibility for one's own right thinking can be relegated to others. When it is understood, as Science and Health declares (p. 106), that "man is properly self-governed only when he is guided rightly and governed by his Maker, divine Truth and Love," it is also seen that his one need is to refuse to believe that he can ever control anything but his own thinking.
With the recognition of the royal kingship of our Most High God, we discern that each man as the son of God reflects this kingliness; in his own individual consciousness it reigns supreme. He reflects the power of a perfect government. He brings every thought into subjection to it. He stands guard over his own thinking, refusing to be less than the expression of perfect Mind. He proves daily, hourly, that he has complete God-given dominion over every inclination, every tendency. He finds that he can go forth to express the glory of God.
In other words, he understands what Mrs. Eddy tells us in "No and Yes" (p. 35) where she says: "Jesus came announcing Truth, and saying not only 'the kingdom of God is at hand,' but 'the kingdom of God is within you.' Hence there is no sin, for God's kingdom is everywhere and supreme, and it follows that the human kingdom is nowhere, and must be unreal." Thus God has answered the desire of the human heart for a King in the only right way, and Christian Scientists look up with great rejoicing because they know in whom they have believed.
