The Detroit Tribune

Nations United

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is an article taken from the Christian Science Monitor and is reprinted for the Tribune readers:

The term, the United Nations, designates a world organization formed for the purpose of securing and maintaining universal peace. What is most urgently needed to implement this manifestly right idea is publicly support based upon an understanding of God as the Supreme Ruler.

The prophet must have understood the actuality of God's government when he made the timeless declaration (Isaiah 33:22), "The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; he will save us."

Christ Jesus preached the gospel of the kingdom of God and gave countless proofs of divine healing power. He taught his followers to pray (Matthew 6:10): "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven."

While the Lord's Prayer has been faithfully repeated for nearly two thousand years, it is doubtful if its application to the healing of nations has been fully understood.

In the spiritual interpretation of the Lord's Prayer which Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science gives in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" is the following (pp. 16-17):

"Thy kingdom come. Thy kingdom is come; Thou art ever-present.

Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Enable us to know,--as in heaven, so on earth,--God is omnipotent, supreme."

Instead of praying to a faraway God to come and establish His kingdom on earth, students of Christian Science are learning to accept the responsibility of preparing a place for the kingdom of heaven in their hearts. They are convinced that mankind must learn to rely on God for physical healing as well as for salvation from sin, for He alone knows how to maintain the harmony of man and the universe.

Failure to utilize the healing power inherent in genuine Christianity has greatly retarded human progress. Christian healing gave clear proof in the early centuries of Christendom that the kingdom of God is demonstrable on earth.

While Napoleon was a prisoner on the island of St. Helena, he became deeply interested in the New Testament. One day he remarked to a member of his suite: "Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded great empires; but on what did the creation of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone founded his empire upon love, and to this day millions would die for him."

The Master was not interested in getting people to die for him, but in getting them to live truly Christian lives. As Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (p. 19), "It was therefore Christ's purpose to reconcile man to God not God to man."

The mistaken belief that Jesus was himself God has obscured the true purpose of his mission. Christ Jesus was the great exemplar of God's law to mankind.

Because he understood the reality of spiritual power and the unreality of physical force and human will, he was able to exercise dominion over sin, sickness, and death. The fact that humanity was not ready in his time to grasp the full significance of the Christ-idea is shown by his promise to send "another Comforter."

That Christian Science is that Comforter, already fulfilling the Master's promise in the experience of individuals, is becoming clearer every day. The practice of Christian Science is even now carrying on the great peace movement which was envisioned by the prophets and founded by the Master.

It is overthrowing false ambitions and worldly aims, and is thus making room for the kingdom of God in the affections of an ever-increasing proportion of mankind. Through hearts united in the universal recognition of God's government, will nations be united in brotherhood and peace.

Today everyone can take an effective part in this great revolutionary movement by learning how to obey God's laws, and by surrendering the human will to the one divine Mind, the only law-giver and King of kings.