Article December 14, 1907 Issue

LOOK WITHIN

LEWIS R. WORKS.

One may most successfully contribute to the overthrow of evil and to the final enthronement of good by properly "minding his own business," by living a life of careful self-scrutiny. This is the great duty of the Christian Scientist.

Habakkuk thus apostrophizes the Almighty: "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity." This wonderful sentence beautifully depicts the idea of the absolute inability of infinite Principle to know or to hold the slightest communion with evil. We are also taught that man, the true man, is the image and likeness of his Father, and we know that he is as incapable of beholding evil or of looking on iniquity as is the Father. We say we know this, and we do know it in theory, but we must reach the actual realization of it. We must know it in practice as well as in precept. We must live it. "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"

The one who has so successfully turned his gaze inward that he can see his own error and overcome it, will have gone a long way towards the final overcoming of all evil, and will be ready to understand scientifically that God is all. The fact of the nothingness of evil, which is just as real to-day as it will be then, will have become apparent, and the memory of evil be for him but the faded dream of mortal imagination. All mortals may not be "like unto whited sepulchers," full of all uncleanness, but all are enough unclean to owe it to themselves and to Truth to look daily and hourly within, to work daily and hourly toward the extirpation of internal uncleanness. One can best know (and love) his neighbor as himself by so cleansing himself that he can see no evil in his neighbor. When all men are so purified then will we indeed be brothers.

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