Editorial March 26, 1910 Issue

"THE MILLS OF GOD."

Annie M. Knott

The familiar statement which has come down from the olden time, "The mills of God grind slowly." expresses a deep-seated conviction that justice comes slowly as contrasted with the processes of injustice, a belief which did not cease with what is known as heathen mythology, but which has colored much of the ethical and religious thinking of modern times. While it is true that both the Jewish and Christian concepts of deity were ethically far in advance of all others, yet even these, as generally understood, leave much to be desired. Although it is conceded that God, to be God, must be perfect, the perfection of His government is denied because human conditions, as they appear to the material senses, express the very opposite. While most people would hesitate to say that God is less than all powerful, they practically deny that He is by attributing unbounded power and influence to evil, and by denying that spiritual understanding can cope with and overcome the aggressive manifestations of evil; though Paul evidently felt sure that it could, when he wrote to the Corinthians: "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds."

From the Christian Science view-point the action of divine Principle is never slow, nor is it ever hastened at the call of human necessity, but the change which comes over human consciousness when Truth dawns upon one can only be described as the passing from death to life. When one hears the voice of Spirit saying, "Let there be light," the inertia of the belief of mind in matter gives place to the quickened sense which tells of the energy of the divine Life, and makes, for the awakened one, "all things new." What mattered it to the woman who touched the hem of Christ's robe that she had been sick for twelve long years; or to the man at the pool of Bethesda that he had lain helpless for thirty-eight years? They both found that "the word of God is quick" as well as "powerful," and so did many others whose recorded healing links together the golden chain of Christian demonstration in the past with that of the present hour.

When humanity as a whole goes forward, it but proves that there is some measure of response to that "quickening life" which nerves the "faltering will" by taking away all fear of failure; and what is true of nations is true of individuals, since the law of progress is invariable in its action. God says, "I change not!" Then, if we receive our help slowly, if justice seems to linger, our greatest need is to get rid of the belief that God and the operation of His law are ever less than perfect, or that man is ever controlled by any laws of sin or disease. The question is not whether divine justice halts by the way, but if our sense of justice is keen enough and alert enough to pierce the belief that evil has power, and to prove its nothingness.

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