Christian
Science (1918 Lecture) (Summary)
Dr.
Walton Hubbard, C.S.B., of Spokane, Washington
Member of the
Board of Lectureship of The Mother Church,
The First Church
of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
We
are impressed with the sentiments expressed in an address delivered by Walton
Hubbard, a well known Christian Scientist, which breathes the spirit of human
brotherhood. It is timely that we should get away from the fear we often feel
about the welfare of our boys in France. Right thinking at home will help them
in right doing at the front. Then, too, we are admonished not to destroy our
possibility of doing good by hating the wrongdoer.
This
Christian Science lecture is delivered at a most welcome time. Read a few of
the following extracts; it will help us to cheer our boys, and it will restrain
us from hating our enemies, as we are wont to do when we know of the evil they
are doing to the world and its people:
"There
is thought being entertained at this time that our young men, who are enlisting
in the cause of liberty and right, are going across the water and are not
coming back. Surely, this wrong thought entertained by our people is not going
to help to bring them back. The Bible says, 'Where the Spirit of the Lord is,
there is liberty,' and we know liberty is a manifestation of the infinite
Principle, God, and this nation has manifested the greatest degree of liberty
that the world has ever known. When these young men go forth to protect, to
perpetuate that liberty, are they not entitled to the protection of the Most
High? When David went forth to meet Goliath, do you think he had any doubt as
to whether he was coming back? Can we not have for these young men the
consciousness of God's protection which the Psalmist had when he said, 'a thousand
shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not
come nigh thee.' We need them to change this wrong thought, and to know that
because these young men go forth in righteousness, they not only can have but
do have God's protection. It is not sufficient for us as Christian Scientists
to give of our time, money, and young men, but we must give in addition our
full quota of right thinking, to the end that this mental mesmerism of
frightfulness and aggression, which has been undertaking to overrun the world,
shall be healed by the meekness and might of divine Love.
"We
need to be very careful in the months that are coming that we do not get to
hating. Things may occur which will make it very easy for us to entertain this
wrong thought. The Master has said that the only way peace can come to the
world is through loving one another.
"The
greatest love which we could show to a neighbor who had become so convinced, so
mesmerized in a wrong thought, that he undertook to impose his will on his
fellow neighbors, and to take away that liberty for which they had struggled
for years, would be to go forth and forcibly restrain him. Today, we have a
nation which, through education and environment, has become so imbued with
wrong thought that it undertakes to impose its will on all its neighbor
nations, and to take from them that liberty for which they have struggled for
centuries, and the kindest, most loving thing which we can do is to go forth
and restrain that nation — and it only allows us to do it in one way.
"But
we need to be very careful that we do not hate. After all, the only lasting
peace that can come to the world must come as the Master has said, through
loving one another. And we can only make this demonstration as we recognize the
fact as taught in Christian Science that 'Principle and idea, — perfect God and
perfect man,' must be 'the basis of thought and demonstration.'
"Let
us then so undertake to see our right relationship to God that we shall realize
the brotherhood of man and be able to demonstrate that degree of love toward
all of our neighbors that will enable us to say of this people, this nation, as
the Master said of his persecutors in his last earthly moments, 'Father,
forgive them; for they know not what they do.'"
[Published
in The Labor World of Duluth, Minnesota, April 20, 1918. No precise title for
this lecture is known. The quotation in the penultimate paragraph is from Mary
Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 259.]