On page 65 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy writes, "The broadcast powers of evil so conspicuous to-day show themselves in the materialism and sensualism of the age, struggling against the advancing spiritual era."
That which we see at work today, more conspicuous, more widespread, in its ambition and design than ever before in the world's history, is the effort of evil to usurp the prerogative of good. Mercy is to be stamped out in mercilessness, justice in oppression, liberty in slavedom. Men are no longer to think or act for themselves. The price of doing so is, if not death, imprisonment. There is to be oneness of control through force, and he who steps outside this ordered oneness is either to be driven back into it again or, if he resists, crushed and silenced. Thus would men, in the insanity of despotism, counterfeit the law of divine Principle, manifest as Love.
Jesus warned the people of such happenings. He told them that "the powers of heaven shall be shaken." But, even as does our Leader, he invariably reassured them. Because of the advancing spiritual era which he had inaugurated, the forces of materialism would range themselves in their combined effort to destroy spirituality. But let men not be deceived or affrighted by the horrors and perplexities of that hour. With the warning was also the guarantee of Love's supremacy: "And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory."
