Article February 13, 1915 Issue

Obedience and Success

ROBERT L. SAWYER

Obedience is the watchword to success. This holds true in the application of every department of science. Mathematics, music, mechanics, and every other field of research, bear ample testimony to the fact that there can be no gain without obedience. The student who is most obedient to the basic law governing within the realm of a particular line of work, will of necessity attain the highest degree of success, and if wise he will not credit achievement to personal ability, but to the fundamental truth operating through obedient channels. If this is true in the material realm, how much more must it be true in that higher line of activity which deals only with the Science of being, and which recognizes "all causation as vested in divine Mind" (Science and Health, p. 379).

The many promises given to God's people as recorded in the Old Testament invariably contain the one condition, "If ye obey." In the first chapter of Joshua we hear this chosen leader encouraged to constant meditation upon "this book of the law," for "then thou shalt have good success." In the first psalm we find this promise reechoed, while in the first chapter of Isaiah is the declaration, "If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land." On the other hand, the people were taught, through many a hard experience, that disobedience brings limitation; as Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (p. 5), "There is no discount in the law of justice and ... we must pay 'the uttermost farthing.'"

"In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength," said the "Holy One of Israel;" the faithful were quiet because confident, and confident because obedient. Beginners in the study of Christian Science sometimes get a false sense of what this confidence means. It is as far from the self-will, bravado, and bluster of egotism as the perfume of the rose is from the sharpness of the thorn. It is the meekness of perfect obedience to God, divine Principle, and Jesus said the meek "shall inherit the earth."

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