Article September 18, 1909 Issue

"LEST WE FORGET"

SAMUEL GREENWOOD

The belief that life and intelligence are material, moving in limited personal orbits, and that, therefore, men can live and act independently of God, is the supreme folly of mortals. Controlled by this belief, the devotion of thought to God is mainly looked upon as a matter of choice or desire, rather than as the necessity of living. Life goes on the same, say they, whether they think much or little, rightly or wrongly, of God, for does not the sun of being shine on the evil as well as on the good? But the suffering and the mortality which accompany the belief of life in matter are its own condemnation, and confirm the Scriptural teaching upon which Christian Science is based, namely, that Life is God, and that apart from Him and His manifestation there is nothing,—no life, no truth, no intelligence, no reality.

We read in Deuteronomy that Moses, after declaring to the Israelites the commandments of God, as revealed to his understanding, went on to say: "And these words which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates."

What does this mean but that God, whom Jesus declared to be "good," must be held in constant remembrance, must dominate the thoughts and affections, must be with us wherever we go, in all we see or do, must be the burden of our conversation and the object of our desire; and that this truth of the infinitude of good must guard the entrance to our consciousness? If there is any less absolute devotion of thought to God, any less complete surrender of the human to the divine whereby mankind can be saved from evil, the Scripture does not reveal it, neither has human invention or desire discovered it.

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