Article August 31, 1907 Issue

RIGHTEOUS JUDGMENT

IDA L. BAKER.

Jesus said, "Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment," and in Science and Health we read that "anatomy, when conceived of spiritually, is mental self-knowledge, and consists in the dissection of thoughts to discover their quality, quantity, and origin" (Science and Health, p. 462). When discordant conditions arise in my work as a teacher in the public schools, I have found these thoughts most helpful. They check the tendency to deal summarily with impulsive and wayward children. Error, with its sudden flurry and noise, would often deceive us and make us think that it alone governs certain children, when all the time good is the real, the only power.

How often, when we have waited for Truth to reveal to us the motive back of a doubtful act, we have learned with surprise that the act was produced by an entirely different motive from the one which the outward appearance indicated. One day at school, while I was collecting some written work from the language class, one of the pupils, instead of handing her paper to me with the others, hastily crumpled it in her hands and then tore it into pieces. Later, when I questioned her as to why she had done this, she explained that just as she was finishing her work she had dropped a big blot of ink upon the paper, and she added, in a hopeless and discouraged manner, that something always happened to prevent her work from being marked "good."

Before I began to talk with the child, her quick temper stood out most prominently in my thought, but when I became conscious of her earnest desire to do her work well, and of the painstaking effort she had put forth, my feelings changed from condemnation to sympathy and love. I showed her in a few words that her temper meant nothing, but that her desire to do her work well alone counted. When the child bade me good-by I felt that we understood each other, and I also realized that Truth had revealed to me as never before the depth of meaning in those wonderful words, "Comprehension is love." This little incident also taught me the great difference between working from the standpoint of the moral law, "Thou shalt not;" and from that of the spiritual law, "Blessed art thou."

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