"A WORLD MORE BRIGHT"

THERE is timely significance in these words from a familiar poem by Mary Baker Eddy (Poems, p. 12):

Mankind everywhere today is seeking "a world more bright," is reaching out for release from the fear, want, tyranny, suspicion, and chaos that constitute so large a part of the global picture. Newspapers and radio daily challenge one to accept or to reject discordant mortal opinions. False material belief may argue a lack of inspired leadership, suggesting the absence of God's care and guidance. Conflict between capital and labor, tension and strife between nations, a world-wide housing shortage, hunger and want, and finally a threat of atomic warfare evidence mankind's dire need.

It is becoming increasingly evident that efforts for peace and prosperity which are based on mere human plans and alliances lack an enduring foundation. But there is a growing recognition that spirituality can lift the world's burdens and end its fears. Multitudes of enlightened men and women, while supporting all that is highest and best in organized human effort, are looking forward confidently to the blessings awaiting mankind's fuller spiritual awakening to the universality and omnipotence of God, the Mind of all.

Christian Scientists have a vital role to play in the establishment of "a world more bright." Theirs is the unique privilege of awakening a darkened world from its bleak and threatening thought images to behold the healing fact that God's spiritual government is already here, forever available to bless all who will accept its peace and protection.

What mankind most needs is spiritualization of thought, a fuller understanding of the leadership of the Christ, Truth, through which alone the world's yearning for peace and plenty can find fulfillment.

Because divine Mind's universe consists not of imperfect material formations or forces but of perfect spiritual ideas, world difficulties have no origin or existence except in the realm of erring human thought. Their solution can be found only through Mind bestowed spiritual understanding, the antipode of erring human thinking. The battleground where evil beliefs must be destroyed and replaced by spiritual truths is in individual consciousness, and the belief in any identity existing apart from God is the aggressive foe that must be conquered.

Fundamental to the establishment of a true sense of government in individual consciousness is the spiritual understanding of God as the one real Mind and of man as God's perfect expression. The awakening to God's government here and now can come about only through the revelation of the Christ within us. This is because the Christ is the true idea of all that is. The Christ reveals to every individual his true consciousness, whereby he discerns the full and perfect expression of God in divine Science. A knowledge of the Christ must become yours and mine before we can find peace for ourselves and most effectively aid in establishing peace for the world. Regardless of what claims of destruction, opposition, or cynicism may confront us, the Christlike understanding of God's government accomplishes the destruction of error and the demonstration of the supremacy of good.

Christ Jesus was recognized by Mrs. Eddy as the world's greatest reformer, its greatest exponent of true government. She writes of him in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 294): "And if he were personally with us to-day, he would rebuke whatever accords not with a full faith and spiritual knowledge of God. He would mightily rebuke a single doubt of the ever-present power of divine Spirit to control all the conditions of man and the universe." The Christ-consciousness governed every action of Jesus. At no time during his revolutionary career did he surrender to evil's arguments. He was severely tested on all points, but his mission was not deflected by evil's arguments of hatred or opposition. With a confident understanding of the Christ-spirit and its power he overcame the opposing forces of material belief. Through the understanding of the Christ, we too must discern that the material universe and material man are only false mortal concepts to be replaced with the spiritual truth of being.

Since divine Principle, Mind, is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and omniactive, there is in reality only one government, and this we must prove in our daily experience, beginning with the home and extending to the affairs of men and nations. The human inclination is usually to place the blame for one's own troubles and those of the world on what appear to be the prevailing material conditions. But the fact is that security is not dependent on material conditions but upon individual realization of man's oneness with God.

Nowhere have the necessity and the reward of recognizing one God alone and His government of all men been expressed more revealingly than in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," where Mrs. Eddy writes (p.340): "One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations; constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the Scripture, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself;' annihilates pagan and Christian idolatry,—whatever is wrong in social, civil, criminal, political, and religious codes; equalizes the sexes; annuls the curse on man, and leaves nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed."

In our participation in spiritual world leadership, which alone can reveal to mankind "a world more bright," we as' Christian Scientists must take an unfaltering stand for the supremacy of Truth and the nothingness of error. We need to know daily that our vision of the Christ cannot be obscured by aggressive mental suggestion of any kind. We will not, for instance, permit ourselves to be distracted from daily study of the Lesson-Sermons and of Mrs. Eddy's writings. We will guard against the infiltration of fear, indolence, hate, racial prejudice, greed, belief in the inevitability of war, and the fundamental mistake of accepting these impostors as our own thinking. We can resist evil's propaganda by claiming the Mind of Christ, which is ever revealing to human consciousness the spiritual facts of being.

Christian Scientists are not neutral. If one would demonstrate the truth of being, he must instantly recognize and reject evil as a false claim, as a belief in a power apart from and opposed to God. Evil suggestions must be reversed and nullified in our own thinking. Evil's claim that it has power to make laws adverse to the good of the individual or of mankind must be refuted with as vigorous mental opposition as we would employ in dissipating a belief of sickness.

In Mrs. Eddy's unparalleled spiritual leadership we have an inspiring example. Her clear apprehension of the Christ, based upon love for God and man, enabled her to withstand the bitter attacks of mortal mind. When the safety of her discovery was threatened by the boasts of error, she immediately refuted human hate with the realization of the omnipresence of divine Love. Under God's guidance she faced a skeptical and hostile world with confidence, repeating the clarion call of the prophet (Jer. 22:29), "O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord." She knew that the battle before her was not against persons but against the carnal mind. She knew that this battle must be fought through to the finish, and that love for God and man will shorten the days of evil until, through the teachings of Christian Science, material history comes to a close, replaced with radiant spiritual development. Knowing that God had called her to reveal the Comforter for which mankind had waited so long, and to make plain the motherhood of God, she was ever conscious of His protection.

There was no question in her thought but that Love was more than equal to any attack of the enemy. Through the authorized editions of her published writings she is today still leading her followers on, pointing the way to increased spirituality and so to increased effectiveness in bringing about better government.

The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, with its unique form of government as outlined in its Manual, is the direct outcome of Mrs. Eddy's spiritual revelation. As the highest human manifestation of the ideal Church, and therefore of true spiritual government, it is today a guiding light in the world, challenging the belief in material despotism wherever found. Mrs. Eddy foresaw the universal functioning of The Mother Church, its destined role as a powerful influence in furthering moral, civil, physical, and religious reform (Pulpit and Press, p.20). To The Christian Science Board of Directors, Mrs. Eddy entrusted the sacred duty of maintaining and furthering the government of The Mother Church as established for all time in the Church Manual. It is the manifest privilege and duty of the members of The Mother Church to support prayerfully the stewardship of this Board.

Material dictatorship is the counterfeit of spiritual leadership; therefore it must inevitably fall before the spirituality of the Church Triumphant. The true idea of Church as the structure of Truth is revealing the glorious history of man as God's beloved son, untouched by beliefs of discord, sin, sickness, or death. Wherever there is a branch of The Mother Church, there is recognition in some degree of the operation of Truth's omniactive spiritual law ; for wherever Truth is understood and utilized, human consciousness is glimpsing the infinite glories of the kingdom of God on earth.

Our duty as students of Christian Science is to pray daily for the appearing of a fuller recognition of this spiritual sense of Church which is awakening the human race. As its standard-bearers, let us know that Christian Scientists cannot be mesmerized by the claims of evil either into accepting them or into ignoring them or neglecting to handle specifically each phase of erroneous thinking that presents itself.

The solution to every challenge of mortal mind may be found in radiant completeness in Mrs. Eddy's writings. Through the inspiration of spiritual understanding our Leader saw more clearly than anyone in this age the new heaven and new earth foreseen by John, entirely apart from earthly conditions, as an ever-present reality. Her discovery sealed the doom of error and immediately began to force it to the surface in a world that had long been slumbering in the mesmeric dream of material thinking. Today's seething world conditions are only a widespread moral chemicalization, which will continue until the last mortal belief is dissolved by the spiritual idea of God and man.

In his daily work for the enlightenment of the world, each individual Christian Scientist must reject the serpentine suggestion that his part in spiritual government is too small to be effective. In proportion as he molds his thinking in accord with the ministry of his God-led Leader, puts into practice the truths he already knows, and prays unceasingly for the awakening of mankind, he will surely

He not only will free himself from the mesmeric bondage of alarm over world conditions, but will directly aid in bringing into manifestation the real heaven and real earth, the kingdom of God and His Christ, which embraces all mankind.