A Word to the Wise

This article was later republished in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany: My. 223:26-225:5

The hour is imminent. Upon it lie burdens that time will remove. Just now divine Love and wisdom saith "Be still and know that I am God." Do all Christian Scientists see or understand the importance of that demand at the moment when human wisdom is inadequate to meet the exigencies of the hour, and they should wait on the logic of events?

I respectfully call your attention thereto, knowing a little as I ought the human need, the Divine demand, and the blessing and the bane which follow obedience and disobedience. Hurried conclusions as to the public thought are not apt to be correctly drawn. The public sentiment is helpful, or dangerous only in proportion to its right, or its wrong concept, and the forward footsteps it impels, or the prejudice it instils which the future must disclose and dispel. Avoid for the immediate present, public debating clubs. Also be sure that you are not caught in some author's net, or made blind to his loss of the Golden Rule of which Christian Science is the predicate and postulate—when borrowing the thoughts, words, and classification of one author, without quotation marks; and giving full credit to another more fashionable but less correct. My books state Christian Science correctly. They may not be as taking to those ignorant of this Science as books less correct—and therefore less profound. But it is not safe to accept the latter as standards. We would not deny their authors a hearing since the Scripture declares: "He that is not against us is on our part." And we would also speak in loving terms of their efforts, but we cannot afford to recommend any literature as wholly Christian Science that is not absolutely genuine.

Beloved students, just now let us adopt the classic saying,—"They also serve who only stand and wait." Our cause is growing apace under the present persecution thereof. This is a crucial hour wherein the coward and the hypocrite come to the surface to pass off; while the loyal at heart and the worker in the spirit of Truth are rising to the zenith of success,—the "well done good and faithful"—spoken by our Master.

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