Editorial December 31, 1979 Issue

The timeless and the timely

GEOFFREY J. BARRATT

Readers of our periodicals and regular students of the Bible Lesson found in the Christian Science Quarterly quite frequently remark how timely a particular article or statement is. They note a clear relevance to some immediate personal situation or current public event.

This relevance is explainable. All these publications point to the ageless truth of being. The more absolutely fundamental an insight—the more expressive it is of God's ever-presence—the more timely it is. Timeless truth is true now. That which is beyond time is eternal. Yet it relates fadelessly to the time-world, and is topical in all days, months, years. Christ Jesus knew this, and Mary Baker Eddy writes of him, "Lives there a man who can better define ethics, better elucidate the Principle of being, than he who 'spake as never man spake,' and whose precepts and example have a perpetual freshness in relation to human events?"^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 269;}

The understanding of timeless truth is always practical. It gives us insight into current affairs, keeps us free of fads. We're less drawn to short-lived superficial trends. We build more durable values into our lives, sorting out the better values from the poorer. We distinguish the solid from the merely ephemeral.

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