Editorial November 28, 1942 Issue

Be More Than a Bystander

Peter V. Ross

Cervantes would have gained citizenship in the world of letters if he had written little more than this: "By the streets of By and By one arrives at the house of Never." Many an executive every day sits down to a desk piled high with papers demanding attention. He will take care of most of them promptly enough. He will answer routine letters, for instance. But one or two documents, supposedly abstruse, he will push back unstudied. He may even put them in the drawer out of sight, that they cannot plague him. Days go by until the time arrives when he is driven to action. He pulls out the offending instruments, gives them searching examination, and readily disposes of them. He might have done so at first.

Difficult problems can be mastered without delay by the man who allows the all-knowing Mind to enlighten him. He who develops the habit of responding to the impulsion of that Mind will seldom lack the capacity to grapple with situations as they arise and to fill his days with achievement. And what a satisfaction it is to get things done instead of permitting them to clutter up the day's program, whether household duties, chores on the farm, jobs in the shop, technical feats in office or laboratory. "Let all things be done decently and in order," is Paul's practical counsel to the Corinthians.

No, it will not do to act the part of a bystander. One must be up and about the Father's business. Not a few people have learned through experience the danger of listlessness or procrastination when symptoms of disease appear. If they are not expeditiously and intelligently challenged as impotent and unexperiencible because of the all-presence and all-power of harmonious Life, God, such beliefs or illusions are liable to grow in one's thought. It is much easier to put them to rout at their first appearance than to dislodge them once they have become entrenched in consciousness. The warning of Mary Baker Eddy in this connection is salutary: "Suffer no claim of sin or of sickness to grow upon the thought. Dismiss it with an abiding conviction that it is illegitimate, because you know that God is no more the author of sickness than He is of sin" (Science and Health, p. 390).

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