Editorial March 6, 1909 Issue

A FAULTLESS COVENANT

Annie M. Knott

All through the Bible—both in the Old and the New Testament—we find frequent references to God's covenant with man, and this subject is tersely summed up in Malachi, where God says, "My covenant was with him of life and peace." This same thought is expressed in Deuteronomy, where the reason for obedience to divine authority is given as being "for our good always, that he might preserve us alive." This is a fine corrective to the popular belief that any divine requirement is for the purpose of maintaining God's authority, which would be wholly unnecessary. All of God's requirements are for man's good, and as they are understood and obeyed the result is "life and peace." We have in the Bible several references to a "new covenant," but a careful study of the text shows that the needed change was to take place only in the human sense of the covenant, "because," we read, "they continued not in my covenant." Then follows the promise, This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts."

No one can deny that mortals have strayed very far from obedience to divine law, or fidelity to the divine covenant, and although they have suffered constantly for their wanderings, they have clung to error with a tenacity worthy of a better cause. When farthest from "life and peace" they have stubbornly contended for the supposed material laws which held them in bondage, insisting that these were God's laws and quite forgetting that God's laws, written on their hearts and their minds, must, according to promise, bring "life and peace," health and harmony. Paul expresses this clearly when he says, "For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live."

In Christian Science we are brought face to face with the faultless covenant of Truth and Love, in which God's ever-operative laws of health and happiness, of purity and peace, are written upon human consciousness, transforming it from the first moment of our awakening to the demands of Truth. It is therefore of the utmost importance that we let go of the old concepts of God and His law, which have failed to bring us either life or peace. If we see the need of great changes in our every-day affairs, and the folly of clinging to that which is confessedly imperfect, on the material plane, should we not also see and admit the greater necessity for a true concept of God and of man's relation to Him? The old concept has certainly proved inadequate to human need; it has not overcome sin, disease, or death, and why should we cling to it? Our revered Leader says, "We soil our garments with conservatism, and afterward we must wash them clean" (Science and Health, p. 452). It is surely wise to set about this cleansing process as soon as possible, if we would be numbered among those who have come "out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white." If the old concepts had been "faultless," we should have needed no other; but they were not, and even as the old covenant was made to give place to the new,—the spiritual,—so we should gladly give up at every point that which is faulty. Thus, to use Mrs. Eddy's words (Ibid., p. 428), "we shall sweep away the false and give place to the true."

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