Of the myriad plagues mortal sense has inflicted upon mankind, none perhaps has brought more suffering, unhappiness, and sorrow than fear. Men have feared not only the present and the future, but also the past; they have feared that sin or disease or false appetites might attack them or their loved ones because of the so-called law of heredity. And sometimes one has found, as Job declared, "The thing which I greatly feared is come upon me." Christian Science, discovered and founded by Mary Baker Eddy, and given to the world in her writings and in the church activities she established, has, by revealing and making available the one unfailing method for the elimination and destruction of fear, shown the way whereby this burden can be lifted from individual thinking.
As long as sickness, sin, lack, false inheritances, world-wide or local calamities, war and such errors, are deemed as coming from an omnipotent God, who visits punishment upon His children, men are filled with fear of what may at any time befall. But Christian Science teaches the great fact that God is Love; that He afflicts His children, His loved ones, not at all; that He knows no evil; that only good can come from Love; therefore that the lie which calls itself evil is not to be feared, because it is unreal. It is but a dream shadow which the light of Truth dispels— and who should fear a dream?
Fear is incompatible with the concept of God as Love. God cannot be loved as the creator and source of all good and at the same time feared as the creator of that which destroys or would deprive man of the good He has bestowed. It is noteworthy that in the first chapter of Genesis and the opening verses of the second, which is the record of the true or spiritual creation, there is no mention of fear. Its first mention is in the second or legendary, untrue account of creation, wherein Adam said, "I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid."
