Editorial January 19, 1907 Issue

AN INCIDENT OF CHRISTIAN LIVING

John B. Willis

The indifference of the great body of Christian believers to the healing significance of their faith grows more and more surprising as one comes to the realization that this indifference is maintained not only despite the Master's specific commands to his disciples,—which commands many have consented to believe were addressed to these individual followers alone,—but despite the fact that he distinctly represented his healing works to be the natural and inevitable fruitage of that ideal life of purity, right thinking, and aspiration, to the attainment of which every one will readily concede that he is called.

The universally accepted tenor of the Master's teaching affirms that the overcoming of sickness and sin is but the sequence of his consciousness of the Divine presence, power, and love, and none will deny that this God-consciousness is the very essence of true faith; that it constitutes religion, and that we are Christian only in so far as we exhibit such a loyalty to this Christ-ideal as makes our following of the Master apparent, a fact known and read of all men. Our Lord's thought respecting our exhibition of love and spiritual self-command, even under the most trying circumstances, is unmistakable, and its binding obligation upon all his followers has been unhesitatingly accepted by the unnumbered Christian teachers who have persistently tried to make it appear that the healing of the sick is not a reflex of faith and love, but of expert medical skill.

To illustrate: Jesus said, "Unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also." And later he added, "And nothing shall by any means hurt you." This can but mean that Jesus demands of all his followers a life which secures immunity from both physical injury and physical want; but who can even hope to measure up to these requirements in the matter of conduct, so long as he denies the possibility of annulling the asserted material laws respecting injury and want? Who can thus yield his other cheek to the smiter, his other coat to the highwayman, if he is not consciously able to demonstrate the power of Truth to heal both the sense of injury and the sense of need?

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