Right living has ever been recognized as the need of mankind, though each passing generation has looked to some successor to usher in the reign of righteousness. Men instinctively cling to the idea of a millennial era when peace and love shall rule the hearts of all peoples, but they do not generally admit that their own time can be the period of its dawning. Mortals find it easier, as a rule, to postpone their right doing than their wrong doing. God's demands, they think, can stand for a more convenient season; but their material pleasures, their selfish purposes, or their business, must be attended to as they have opportunity. As Jesus said of his teachings, that they were not to give peace to false conditions, so Christian Science has come to waken Christians and others out of their chronic apathy towards the claims of God.

A too common conception of God is that of an indulgent parent, who will not hold His children to the strict observance of His commandments. Christians who entertain this thought suppose that if they keep a fraction of their Master's teachings, live a fairly moral life, and avow a general acceptance of Christianity, then the balance of God's requirements will not be urged against them. Although they had abundant opportunity to do the right things they have left undone, they still comfort themselves with the belief that their sins will be pardoned at the last. This attitude towards God does not ascribe as much dignity to His law as to the laws of mortals. In our human courts even, those who are ignorant of the laws are not excused from their observance, much less those who know and do not. Why should we deceive ourselves that "the Judge of all the earth" is less just and less exacting than mortal man?

We should remember that it is not ourselves but God who decides what shall be required of us. God's demands upon mankind are made for their good, not for His; and their lack of compliance therewith cannot be atoned for by another, nor be adjusted or dispensed with through the lapse of time. Nothing that others do can compensate us for what we should do and do not. For God to approve man's conduct before it has become perfect would be to lose His own likeness in an erring mortal. The righteousness required of mankind is the necessity of their salvation; hence to pardon its omission, even in a degree, would but hold them still, to that degree, in the grasp of evil.

To forgive the unkindness and meanness of mortals would not thereby make them kind and loving; then wherein would be the advantage of this forgiveness? There is no way to the refined sweetness and joy of purified love except through the practice of kindness and gentleness and self-sacrifice. God does not encourage mortals to think that they can omit these things, and yet be admitted to the same plane of consciousness with those who have crucified the lusts of self through a life of goodness and love. The belief that mortals will be forgiven, either in this world or the next, the things they could have done but have not, is a delusion from which their own suffering must some time awaken them.

Although Christian Science teaches (Science and Health, p. 254) that God does not require perfection of us as mortals until we have conquered in our warfare with the flesh, this does not afford us an excuse for ease or idleness in that warfare. God demands of us all the time all that we can do. "We are all capable of more than we do" (Science and Health, p. 89). Then what of the things which we are capable of, yet do not? Do we expect to escape the doing of them some time? if not, why not do them now? We cannot find time for yesterday's work to-day, nor will we find time for to-day's work to-morrow. Each day's duties demand all the time we have. When do we think of doing this neglected work? A little left undone each day that we could have done, accumulates rapidly. What shall we do with such a growing surplus of neglect, since God will not forgive it; that is, deal with us as though we had not been neglectful? And yet we complain sometimes because God does not heal us more quickly of our discords and faults. Is it wise or honest to expect that for doing a part of our work we shall receive the same reward as if we had done it all? We do not reason thus in our material affairs.

The divine, impartial justice of Truth does not give men something for nothing. It is folly to seek the reward of working if we are not doing the work. When divine Love says, "Son, give me thine heart," it is not enough that one half, or three fourths, or even nine tenths be offered, while the balance goes to selfishness and hate. If men were not capable of righteousness it would not be required of them. The man with the one talent was not expected to do the work of the man with five, but the full work of the one was justly required. God did not expect Judas to do the work of Jesus; but He did require the honesty and fidelity which he was able to give, and through which he could have grown towards his Master.

Christian Science has laid on us a larger responsibility by giving us a clearer understanding of what is right and what is wrong; but it has given us as well an increased ability to meet the demands of God. It has taken away the false hope of an unmerited pardon, but it has given us the understanding how to work out our salvation. This work includes the abandonment of evil practices, of wrong thinking and false speaking, and the doing of all the good that lies within the range of present possibility. It means this all the time, for God's time is always. The question is not if this work is hard, but if we can do it. We are not asked for impossible things, but the possible things are often hard; yet to give them up on that account will not relieve us of the doing of them. How can we expect to escape from evil and its consequences if we neglect to deliver ourselves from it through our own right doing?

The "suffer it to be so now" does not apply to the indulgence of dishonesty or selfishness or any form of sin; it does not apply to the thoughtless disregard of the injunctions of our Church Manual, to careless ignorance as to the needs and success of our Cause, or to our duties as Christian Scientists towards it and our literature. It does not apply to the indiscriminate and wanton discussion of our own or of others' errors or diseases or sins. It gives us no refuge for idleness or ease or lack in the service we are capable of rendering unto God and man.

We have no right to say what we cannot do until we have tried our best and hardest. It would be a revelation and a blessing to most of us if we did with our might all that we found at our hands to do. Contentment with what we are doing is a false peace if we are not doing all that we can, not what we have time for after worldly things are cared for. To go to God with a prayer on our lips while we are too lazy or too selfish or too indifferent to do all the good we are capable of, is to offer the prayer of the unrighteous that availeth not. What will be the use of saying that we tried to do right, when we could have done right and did not? What would we think of a man who said that he tried to be honest because he only stole twenty dollars when he could have taken a hundred? What would God think of a Christian who said that he tried to love his neighbor as himself, but that he couldn't help being a little hateful and a little selfish?

What law of matter or of mortal mind can compel us to believe what is not true, to think what is not true, or to live what is not true, beyond the necessity of our ignorance? Does any law in heaven or on earth make it incumbent on man to be selfish or sinful or impure, when with every temptation to be so is an opportunity to be the reverse? When we know that God renders unto every man "according to his work," our own desire for salvation should impel us to be ceaselessly working for the coming of God's kingdom within us. If we are doing all that we can to rid the world of its discord and evil through our own self-purification; if we are filling full our every opportunity to love and help our neighbor, to be faithful to our Church, and to have one God, then we can enter into that rest that remains for the people of God.