Editorial July 4, 1903 Issue

The Destructive Impulse

When Christian Science breaks the fetters that bound us to a thousand erroneous theories and practices, and we begin to see that many of our pet schemes and actuating motives are the expressions of human will and misdirected effort, we are disposed to discard them all and at once. We feel that we must be immediately translated into a new environment which will give us a fresh impulse and make it easy to adjust things to our lately acquired and Christianly scientific point of view. In this transition stage of our experience, we are filled with fear as we recognize the materialism of our pursuits and occupations.

We are liable at such a moment to yield to the impulse of an undiscriminating destructiveness, and may be tempted to flee from that which has cost us years of untiring effort in literature, in art, in social acquirement, in everything. Like Moses we are frightened at what now seems to be the logical outcome of obedience, and it is just here we need to be reminded that "Jesus was a Saviour, not a destroyer;" that he came to fulfil, not to annul, and that the teachings of our Leader, in strict conformity to those of the Master, lead not by the way of condemnation and destruction, but discrimination and transfiguration.

Just so sure as Moses had to go back and handle the serpent, shall we be obliged to demonstrate our way out of old environments. We need to recognize the good, the redeemable, in the old and adapt it to the Master's use; to see the falsity of the evil, the irredeemable, and cast it out by destroying it in our own consciousness. Thus, and thus only, will our past experience become a rod on which to lean.

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