Every age, every period, brings its own responsibilities in proportion to its development. As more is required of the adult than of the child, so, in a period of religious freedom like this of the twentieth century, one's duty to himself and to his fellow-man involves more individual study and digestion of the demands of Truth. God, Principle, supreme wisdom is ever-present, ever-operative, changeless! It is according to the state of our spiritual perception that God seems nearer and dearer, or father off and sterner; and mankind, judging God from what they see but darkly upon the plane of human belief, can be led to desire growth through spiritual perception only as they learn to think of God as good; as Love, instead of merely power.

This question of growth in the understanding of Truth and its demands is most important. Again has a great light dawned upon the world, that it might see God. This light is dispelling the shadows of evil belief which had gradually obscured the radiance of the Christ-teaching, but mortal man, not yet ready to forsake his gods of habit, of sensuousness, of false intellectuality, is disposed to close his eyes to the light, and cheat himself into saying, "There is no light—there is no truth," for he can neither see any evidence of them nor grasp any tangible result of their action. Self-deception is one of the greatest evils of the times; through its agency men beguile themselves into believing that they are doing all their duty, all that can be reasonably demanded of them, when they really know in the depths of consciousness that they have done only part of their reasonable duty, and are simply waiting to see if they may not content the divine law with that fraction of its demands, and reserve the rest of their time, strength, and resources for their own pleasures; thus placing the Giver of all blessings in the light of a tax-gatherer, whom it is clever to avoid and to cheat.

If it were only realized that the more we give of our good things, the more abundantly blessings flow unto us; if it were only realized that every effort to serve Love is blessed a thousand-fold, we would not make these reserves of things that worms and rust devour and corrupt, but we would learn to give up material possessions for Love's sake, take up the cross and follow Jesus, as he bade the rich young man to do.

To "take up the cross" is usually understood to mean to bear with resignation, if with content, the trials of human life, whether these trials arise from the conflicts of human desire, of temperament, of social and domestic conditions, or from the religious beliefs and attitude of others. To "take up the cross" is also used to express humility, the cross having been in eastern lands the instrument of death for criminals. Therefore, when Jesus bade the young man who begged to know how he could be saved, to sell whatever he possessed and give to the poor, to take up the cross and follow him, he not only asked him to give up wealth and power, home and friends, as the condition of spiritual blessing and freedom, but to take up the practice of humility; to become one of a wandering company of men and women who, devoting their lives to the Master they believed in and loved, followed him from one town to another, never knowing whether he would be greeted with kindness or with stones, whether he would be given the seat of teacher in the synagogue or be cast down from the walls of the city. His disciples were to share in all the humiliations showered upon him; this was to be their cross. The recognition of Jesus' Messiahship, the conviction that he and his followers were under the constant protection of God, so long as they served Him, and the perfect faith or loyalty needed to endure all these conditions,—this evidently was what the young man lacked.

To-day, if Jesus the Christ were visible among men, the same reproof and command would be uttered by him: "One thing thou lackest: ... take up the cross, and follow me."

Be humble and loyal, seems to be the watchword of Christian Science to all who, through the unveiling of divine Love to human consciousness, have been healed of doubt and despair; who, in their flesh, see God, Life, through the healing of that divine Love which meets all human need.

Faith does not mean mere belief, the acceptance of a truth as a reasonable thing; it means consecration, devotion, loyalty to duty,—all those virtues which speak for honesty, sincerity, conscientiousness of heart and purpose. A man who is not loyal to his convictions is despised, while a man who is true to his fellow-man, and to his ideal of manhood, is reverenced by all. This is mere truism, but it helps one to measure and to realize what our duty is to that Science of God which dispels not only evil and suffering, but the fear of them, and implants in their stead the ever-living seeds of honesty, temperance, faith, hope, and love, which, springing up, will make human consciousness as a watered garden.

Can any one be indifferent to the reverence due to the Discoverer of this Science, this knowledge of God as All in all? Does not the faintest gleam of this Science irradiate life with a celestial light in which we see all things made new and beautiful,—a new heaven and a new earth, a new motive for action and a new plane of action? Led by Love she has watched faithfully through the darkest hours of the night, and in the brightening to-day she still labors that all the world may be blessed. A faithful disciple, she was found with her lamp trimmed and brightly burning when the call of Truth came, and in this she became the servant and benefactor of all.