If one were to list, in order of importance, all the enemies of mankind, fear would certainly be near the top of the list. One might even see freedom from fear as the ultimate objective of most of mankind's efforts. Mrs. Eddy recognizes the importance of freedom from fear and gives us in her works the knowledge that enables us to win our freedom from this enemy.
Fear of anything is always the result of a belief in something besides good, God. If we fear death, we are believing in something besides infinite Life. If we fear lack, we are believing in something besides infinite supply. If we fear disease, we are believing in something besides God's reflection, spiritual man. If we fear war, we are believing in something besides the one Mind.
Therefore when these beliefs are banished and replaced in consciousness by the truth and the conviction that God is All and there is none else, fear disappears.
This process of banishment and replacement is demonstrated when one fully understands the implications of Mrs. Eddy's words in Science and Health, "The starting-point of divine Science is that God, Spirit, is All-in-all, and that there is no other might nor Mind,—that God is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle."Science and Health, p. 275;
If God is indeed All, then it is self-evident that there can be nothing besides Him. But this self-evident fact that there is nothing else needs to be fully acknowledged before we are able to give complete recognition to God's allness. And this acknowledgment is brought about by God Himself through the action of His law.
How does God's law do this?
By simply bringing to the surface of our experience any beliefs of anything else besides God, known or unknown, that may claim to be lurking in thought and letting those beliefs be seen as nothing and so eliminated.
Mrs. Eddy writes, "In Isaiah we read: 'I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do all these things;' but the prophet referred to divine law as stirring up the belief in evil to its utmost, when bringing it to the surface and reducing it to its common denominator, nothingness. The muddy riverbed must be stirred in order to purify the stream. In moral chemicalization, when the symptoms of evil, illusion, are aggravated, we may think in our ignorance that the Lord hath wrought an evil; but we ought to know that God's law uncovers so-called sin and its effects, only that Truth may annihilate all sense of evil and all power to sin."p. 540;
Today, as of old, the commotion that seems to occur as false beliefs reach the surface may appear to result from sin or sickness created by God and visited upon mankind as punishment or in capriciousness. But even in ancient days the spiritually minded knew this was not the case. In speaking to his brothers who had come to him on their knees for forgiveness, Joseph pointed out that although they had thought to do him evil, it was God who brought him to Egypt to save His people (seeGen. 50: 19, 20). And to the cruel Pharaoh from whom God delivered the children of Israel, He is represented as saying, "For this cause have I raised thee up, for to shew in thee my power."Ex. 9:16;
As we come to understand that this surfacing of error is only the process by which God proves His own allness, our fear of such error lessens. It becomes plain that error is not "mine" or "thine" but is only being exposed and proven to be nothing in a natural process that works continuously to prove and maintain God's absolute supremacy.
The understanding of this process is an important aspect of the Comforter the Master promised would come after him.
The writer can attest to the comforting powers of the understanding of this divinely impelled process. He once saw it illustrated in the healing of an extreme case of longstanding nervous tension, or fear.
A student of Christian Science, owner of a service business related to publishing, found himself close to prostration brought on by business pressures. Long hours of hard work without respite, a meager return for the original investment, and an increasingly doubtful outlook for the future had brought him to a point of desperation. Then an ill-advised financial move added a sizable debt. It looked as if he might lose everything.
One evening, as he and his wife were earnestly studying the Lesson-Sermon in the Christian Science Quarterly, she quoted a favorite saying of a friend who was a student of Christian Science, "It's not some awful thing happening!" He pondered the words. It seemed almost too much to believe that his present problems could be classified as "not some awful thing happening." But he prayed for understanding, and his thought turned to "the starting-point of Christian Science," just quoted, "that God, Spirit, is All-in-all, and that there is no other might nor Mind." Something told him that in that starting point lay the solution to all his fears.
He began to reason that it is the primary necessity of everything real to proclaim, or demonstrate, that it does indeed exist, a proclamation logically including the fact that nothing else exists in its place. Further reasoning told him that since all real entities are representatives of God's qualities, this primary necessity of self-assertion is a direct reflection of God's own self-assertion, His proof of His self-existence. This self-assertion of God must include, to human sense, a demonstration that nothing else exists in His place—and that place is infinity.
The student saw that all difficulties of mankind are only lies claiming to occupy some of God's place in infinity, and so are surfacing by divine law to prove their nothingness. And he began to see that there is nothing wrong in this process, but indeed that it is the very essence of what is going on all the time and is wholly beneficial.
Further search of the Scriptures showed Christ Jesus telling his disciples that he came "not to send peace, but a sword"Matt. 10:34; and that he came "to send fire on the earth."Luke 12:49. Christian Science elucidates these statements, explaining the conflict between Truth and error that Jesus inaugurated, and teaching us to rejoice in error's correction. Who would not rejoice in losing with God, losing the lies as they are forced to the surface to be destroyed?
A joyous new concept of life flooded the student's consciousness. He saw that these painful complexities did not belong to him or anyone personally. He began to separate himself from a false sense of liability and see himself as a spectator standing aside observing the divine process in operation. The utter inability of the false claims of lack, frustration, and weariness to usurp God's place and power became fully evident to him. He felt as if he saw for the first time the secret of the universe. For the first time in years he felt no fear.
Here indeed was the Comforter. And as he thanked God for the unfoldment, it was almost as if he were expressing gratitude for the errors, because he knew that he would never have experienced this greater sense of God's allness if these lies had not been forced so vividly to the surface.
He then saw the reasons for Jesus' expression of gratitude to God when he accepted the symbolic cup of bitterness as he sat with his disciples at the Last Supper. Jesus knew that the time had come for the sum total of error, the seven-headed dragon of hate revenging itself upon the Christ, Truth, to break through the surface of mortal mind in self-destruction, and he saw this clearly as the divine process in operation.
This realization must have supported Jesus through his betrayal, trial, and ordeal on the cross and prepared him for the glory of the resurrection.
As the student's understanding advanced, fear was replaced by the Comforter as it brought him realization of the truth, and this began to make itself felt and he paid his debt with ease. What had looked like a financial mistake was turned to success.
The student was unceasingly grateful for the understanding that for one to demonstrate the kingdom of heaven on earth the lies have to be brought to the surface and proved to be nothing, and that in this process trials are indeed blessings in disguise. He had seen how salutary is sorrow and how tribulation can be the doorway to the kingdom.
He had found the Comforter and was free.
