Editorial December 17, 1910 Issue

LOVE'S INSISTENCY

John B. Willis

The solicitous urgency of the two angels, the messengers of Truth, who figure in the story of Lot's escape from Sodom, their compelling cry, "Escape for thy life," fittingly illustrates that persistent call to and following after the sons of men, if haply they may be saved, which speaks in human terms for the ceaseless activity of divine Love. Upon the lips of the Master this thought comes to its bloom in the sweetly touching tale of the good shepherd. Said he, "How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray?" What he thus expressed in word, of Love's continuous seeking for the wanderers of the flock, he expressed in deed when upon the cross he offered up his life, "a ransom for many."

In Christian Science it is seen that Truth never abdicates, Love never yields, and every heroism of human affection, every pleading prayer of the mother-heart witnesses to the demands of the good that is God. Jacob's lone wrestling in the night watches upon the banks of the Jabbok, his broken cry, "I will not let thee go," speaks well for the aspiring human sense when, in the hour of conscious weakness and pressing need, it casts itself wholly upon God as life's only refuge and hope; and yet more definitely, more wonderfully, does it speak for that clinging persuasion of the divine which will consent to no peace for the aspiring save "the peace of God."

In another aspect of human experience the persistent assaults of conscience give equally convincing witness to that patiently pursuing rebuke of Truth and Love which knows and can know no capitulation and no defeat. Pressed upon every side by a sense of the impossibility of escaping from the monitions of the divine, the psalmist cried out. "Thou hast beset me behind and before ... Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?" and in this he voiced the deepest consciousness of both the good and the bad. The touch of the lash of conscience upon the quivering sense of the sobered and suffering roué speaks quite as surely for Love as does the winsome appeal of the ideal to him who with elated responsiveness yields himself to its heavenly guidance.

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