A vigorous declaration of truth is the beginning of victory, and victory comes by grappling with error until its nothingness is seen. Apathy claiming that this present warfare is not ours as individuals, that we can succeed by ignoring error in the struggle for righteousness, that we can avoid actual combat by a complacent security in human good, even the glib assertion that there is no warfare—this apathy must be annihilated if we would claim a victory over evil.
The dragon of paganism would destroy the spiritual idea, but the dragon cannot effectually war against the spiritual idea. War will be waged between the spiritual fact of brotherly love and the evil menace of tyranny and slavery until Spirit triumphs over belief in evil as real. To say, "There is no war," and leave the subject there is not to gain the triumph of Spirit.
"We attack the sinner's belief in the pleasure of sin, alias the reality of sin, which makes him a sinner, in order to destroy this belief and save him from sin; and we attack the belief of the sick in the reality of sickness, in order to heal them. When we deny the authority of sin, we begin to sap it; for this denunciation must precede its destruction." Thus writes Mary Baker Eddy (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 63).
