Jesus challenged the make-believe of the scribes and Pharisees; he tried to break down the barriers between Gentile and Jew at a moment when the Jews were hoping for a national revival in their challenge to the Roman Empire. The Master urged men to work out their own salvation, to learn to think for themselves instead of being mental salves to despotism, whether civil or ecclesiastical; and he demonstrated the allness of God and the nothingness of matter. Today the world is faced with the choice of two irreconcilable forms of government, democracy and dictatorship: one basing itself on liberty, justice, good will, initiative, the other utilizing fear and hypnotism to enslave.
The challenge is not unexpected. Paul in his letter to the Galatians (5:20) spoke of those evil beliefs now so in evidence: "witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies." Mary Baker Eddy states in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 96): "This material world is even now becoming the arena for conflicting forces. On one side there will be discord and dismay." And on page 102 she states: "The mild forms of animal magnetism are disappearing, and its aggressive features are coming to the front. The looms of crime, hidden in the dark recesses of mortal thought, are every hour weaving webs more complicated and subtle."
The dictatorships threatening us today, sometimes called dialectical materialism, are argumentative, aggressive, deceitful, and tyrannical. Their rulers use power to weaken individuality and responsibility. It must also be mesmeric hallucination which causes decent men to support these systems.
