Overcoming Fear

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018
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The Bible and Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy

PSALMS

56:1 Be merciful unto me, O God:
3 What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.
53:2 God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God.
5 There were they in great fear, where no fear was:

JOB

3:25 … the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.

SCIENCE & HEALTH
SH 410:29-30
Christian scientific practice begins with Christ’s keynote of harmony, “Be not afraid!”

SH 71:1
Nothing is real and eternal,–nothing is Spirit,–but God and His idea. Evil has no reality. It is neither person, place, nor thing, but is simply a belief, an illusion of material sense.

SH 186:11
Evil is a negation, because it is the absence of truth. It is nothing, because it is the absence of something. It is unreal, because it presupposes the absence of God, the omnipotent and omnipresent. Every mortal must learn that there is neither power nor reality in evil.

GENESIS

3:9 And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?
And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.
And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

SCIENCE & HEALTH
SH 532:26-27, 28
Fear was the first manifestation of the error of material sense.
In the allegory the body had been naked, and Adam knew it not; but now error demands that mind shall see and feel through matter, the five senses. The first impression material man had of himself was one of nakedness and shame. Had he lost man’s rich inheritance and God’s behest, dominion over all the earth? No! This had never been bestowed on Adam.

SH 307:31-8
Above error’s awful din, blackness, and chaos, the voice of Truth still calls: “Adam, where art thou? Consciousness, where art thou? Art thou dwelling in the belief that mind is in matter, and that evil is mind, or art thou in the living faith that there is and can be but one God, and keeping His commandment?” Until the lesson is learned that God is the only Mind governing man, mortal belief will be afraid as it was in the beginning, and will hide from the demand, “Where art thou?”

HABBAKUK

1:12 Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, mine Holy One?
13 Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity:

ISAIAH

50:10 Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God.
41:10 Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.
13 For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee
26:3 Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee:

SCIENCE & HEALTH
SH 504:28-31
Spirit is light, and the contradiction of Spirit is matter, darkness, and darkness obscures light. Material sense is nothing but a supposition of the absence of Spirit.

SH 92:26
The foundation of evil is laid on a belief in something besides God. This belief tends to support two opposite powers, instead of urging the claims of Truth alone. The mistake of thinking that error can be real, when it is merely the absence of truth, leads to belief in the superiority of error.

SH 357:4-9
God is “of purer eyes than to behold evil.” We sustain Truth, not by accepting, but by rejecting a lie.
Jesus said of personified evil, that it was “a liar, and the father of it.” Truth creates neither a lie, a capacity to lie, nor a liar.

MARK

9:17 And one of the multitude answered and said, Master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit;
22 And ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us.
23 Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.
24 And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.
25 When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him.
26 And the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him:

SCIENCE & HEALTH
SH 214:19-21
Mortals are inclined to fear and to obey what they consider a material body more than they do a spiritual God.

SH 493:20-22
Disease is an experience of so-called mortal mind. It is fear made manifest on the body.

SH 411:23
Disease is an image of thought externalized. The mental state is called a material state. Whatever is cherished in mortal mind as the physical condition is imaged forth on the body.

SH 392:5-8
Fear, which is an element of all disease, must be cast out to readjust the balance for God. Casting out evil and fear enables truth to outweigh error.

SH 495:14-20
When the illusion of sickness or sin tempts you, cling steadfastly to God and His idea. Allow nothing but His likeness to abide in your thought. Let neither fear nor doubt overshadow your clear sense and calm trust, that the recognition of life harmonious–as Life eternally is–can destroy any painful sense of, or belief in, that which Life is not.

SH 368:31-32
When fear disappears, the foundation of disease is gone.

DEUTERONOMY

31:6 Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, …
8 … the Lord, he it is that doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed.

I KINGS

17:1 And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.
8 ¶And the word of the Lord came unto him, saying,
9 Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there: behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee.
10 … And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, the widow woman was there gathering of sticks: and he called to her, and said, Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.
And as she was going to fetch it, he called to her, and said, Bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread in thine hand.
And she said, As the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.
And Elijah said unto her, Fear not; go and do as thou hast said: but make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son.
For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth.
And she went and did according to the saying of Elijah: and she, and he, and her house, did eat many days.

SCIENCE & HEALTH
SH 66:10-11, 6-7
Trials are proofs of God’s care.
Trials teach mortals not to lean on a material staff, — a broken reed, which pierces the heart.

SH 410:14-20
Every trial of our faith in God makes us stronger. The more difficult seems the material condition to be overcome by Spirit, the stronger should be our faith and the purer our love. The Apostle John says: “There is no fear in Love, but perfect Love casteth out fear. . . . He that feareth is not made perfect in Love.”

II TIMOTHY

1:7 For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

I JOHN

4:16 … God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
17 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear:
17 He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

JOHN

14:16 … I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;
17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.
27 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

JOSHUA

1:9 … Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.

AND FROM PSALMS IN THE NEW ENGLISH BIBLE:

23:1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall want nothing.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures, and leads me beside the waters of peace.
3 He renews life within me, and for his name’s sake guides me in the right path.
4 Even though I walk through a valley dark as death I fear no evil, for thou art with me, …

SCIENCE & HEALTH
S&H 339:8-10
God, Spirit, alone created all, and called it good. Therefore evil, being contrary to good, is unreal, and cannot be the product of God.

SH 406:19-25
Resist evil–error of every sort–and it will flee from you. Error is opposed to Life. We can, and ultimately shall, so rise as to avail ourselves in every direction of the supremacy of Truth over error, Life over death, and good over evil, and this growth will go on until we arrive at the fulness of God’s idea, and no more fear that we shall be sick and die.

SH 380:19-21
Nothing but the power of Truth can prevent the fear of error, and prove man’s dominion over error.

Publications Quotation
“Overcoming Fear”
Hermann S. Hering
The Christian Science Journal
April, 1933

“Practical use is made of the ability to recognize error as error, by detecting the approach of fear and forestalling it. In Christian Science the overcoming of fear is of vital importance. The evil and presumptuous nature of this error are seen in the fact that it claims that evil supersedes God, and thereby demands supremacy. Indulging fear, then, is evidence of one’s belief in a power greater than God. On page 92 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes: “The foundation of evil is laid on a belief in something besides God. This belief tends to support two opposite powers, instead of urging the claims of Truth alone. The mistake of thinking that error can be real, when it is merely the absence of truth, leads to belief in the superiority of error.” Here she makes it clear that, if one believes error to be real, it then appears in belief to be superior to and more powerful than God. This mistaken attitude towards error must be recognized, for it applies to every phase of evil; indeed, to all discord.

“It is logically true that when fear is felt, this in itself is evidence of the unreality of the thing feared, for it is plain that we are never afraid of God and His ideas, and consequently are never afraid of anything real. It is very helpful, then, to recognize the fact that we never receive a suggestion or argument of fear from anything real, for reality does not include or produce anything harmful or frightening. Whatever aids one in seeing the unreality of fear is a distinct help in overcoming it. “

Of Interest:

HERMANN S. HERING, a Philadelphian, received his B.S. and M.E. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. After a special study of electrical engineering in London, he taught at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, for eight years. After his wife, Marian White Hering, healed him of a protracted illness through Christian Science in 1893, he took Primary class instruction with Ellen Cross, one of Mrs. Eddy’s students, became a member of The Mother Church, and became a Christian Science practitioner, officially giving up his academic career in 1899. Hermann read with Miss Cross in Second Church of Christ, Scientist, Baltimore, and in 1901, they developed and held a Thanksgiving Day service. Mrs. Eddy heard of it and was intrigued. By the following year, she instituted an annual Thanksgiving service held at The Mother Church and in all Christian Science branch churches. Professor Hering was Committee on Publication for Maryland and the District of Columbia, and in 1902, became First Reader of The Mother Church. He also served a term as First Reader of the Concord, New Hampshire, church. He was a Christian Science practitioner and teacher, and in 1905 he was appointed to the Christian Science Board of Lectureship, lecturing for over thirty years.