THE Concordances to the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, reveal an interesting number of instances in which she couples the thought of meekness and the thought of might. For example, in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 163), referring to Christ Jesus she says that he "taught mankind to win through meekness to might, goodness to grandeur,—from cross to crown, from sense to Soul, from gleam to glory, from matter to Spirit." The significance of this association of these qualities is arresting, for they are sometimes regarded as not being clearly capable of close connection.
Certain forms of religion have promulgated the fallacious sense of meekness which indicates a mere unquestioning submission to every circumstance, in the belief that God intended mankind to be nonresistant to evil conditions. This false view has tended to subjugate mortals under the belief that sin, sickness, and death are to be accepted with what measure of patience the sufferer may muster, instead of inculcating the understanding that because they are opposed to the nature of God and man in His image, they should be resisted with the same degree of conviction that one should oppose the attempt of thieves to enter his domicile. Meekness is not weakness.
Webster's definition of "meek" is in part as follows: "Not easily provoked or irritated; patient under injuries;... forbearing;... humble." These characteristics, indeed, must precede any might or authority exercised through the understanding of Christian Science; and since, as recorded in Genesis, spiritual dominion is a gift of God to man, it follows that meekness in its true sense is a concomitant of spiritual might. Might without meekness may lead into error, and yet meekness without might would be stultification. They must be developed simultaneously, in order that one may arrive at that "measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" of which the apostle writes.
