Editorial May 7, 1910 Issue

THE TRUE KINSHIP

John B. Willis

There are many Christian people who unhesitatingly accept the teaching of Christ Jesus as the highest spiritual authority, and yet who find it difficult if not impossible to explain or approve his statements and attitude as recorded in the 46th to the 50th verses of the 12th chapter of Matthew, where he seems to have turned away from the human sense of sonship and declared for the supremacy of the spiritual. This inability to understand his words is not at all inexplicable in view of the fact that those who accept the material order as divine can but conclude that the relations incident thereto are a part of that order, and therefore secondary to none other; hence for Christ Jesus to intimate that his least disciple is just as near, just as much to him, as his own mother, seems to them to put him in the position of one who is doing violence to a divine provision.

To the Christian Scientist these words of the Master are but one of the many incidental evidences that he recognized God, Spirit, as the only creator, the Father of man, and taught that every human relation can come to its true blossoming only when it is grown in an atmosphere of continuous and intelligent effort to realize the full significance of this eternal truth. In so far as one accepts the teaching that all true being is Spirit and Spirit's manifestation, in so far he must realize that all true relations are also spiritual, and that the idealization of human living of marriage, parenthood, brotherhood, friendship, etc., is to be effected by holding the spiritual fact ever in thought, and honestly endeavoring to bring it into demonstration.

It is often true that, as the result of some rare affection or some mutual consecration, human lives seem to be wondrously blended. Witness the lasting attachment of old compatriots and soldiers, the tenderness of the life-long thought of each other by those who have suffered and faced death together. Like the early disciples, these men are true socialists; they have come to be brothers indeed. The bloom of such a fellow-feeling always exhales the fragrance of a fine sentiment, and this has often been the one redemptive and inspiring fact of otherwise dreadful tragedies. Such realizations, however, are always supersensual,—their most distinctive feature is their indifference to both caste and consanguinity. In every true patriot, parent, brother, or friend the divine is transforming the human, and in a thousand historic instances has such an achievement reemphasized the fact that true brotherhood, the only satisfying kinship, is grounded in mutual devotion to and realization of the Christ-ideal, apart from which human relations do not and cannot fulfil our hope or satisfy our longing. This was the basis and support of that fraternity of which Christ Jesus was the founder and head, and its significance to our daily experience is emphasized by Mrs. Eddy when she says, "Happiness is spiritual, born of Truth and Love" (Science and Health, p. 57).

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