Editorial May 21, 1910 Issue

THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE

John B. Willis

There is nothing that the average man is more frequently prompted to do than to dodge the disagreeable and leave it for the other fellow. This temptation is a test of true gentlemanliness as well as of moral character. When the call has come to go to the front, and face the enemy, a good many of us may have wished mightily, for a minute at least, that we could find a good stump and hide behind it, though knowing that cowardice is despicable and degrading. To win here is to launch a reformation and open a new era in the history of one's progress and capacity. All great opportunities to do for oneself or others are attended by such temptations. The argument that a given good end may be just as surely reached by a more agreeable course is very specious, and that it should be so welcomed by mortals is in evidence of that inherent mental laziness which is one of our most subtle and smoothtongued foes. How promptly Christ Jesus resisted the allurements of an assertedly thornless path.

To do a thing awkwardly and laboriously, when it can be done artistically and easily, has no flavor of virtue whatever. Right living is abundantly strenuous at its best, and those who superstitiously court martyrdom by ignoring a line of lesser resistance which involves the sacrifice of no principle,—well, such people are certainly not wise. The vital need today, as always, is for those who, like the great Wayshower, will not balk at any hardship which may pertain to duty; who will not shirk and who will not compromise, but who, like true soldiers, are faithful, if need be, "unto death." These find their reward, a crown, as John tells us; and more, they find that they did follow the line of least resistance all the while, though human sense would have argued that they were passing it by. And this brings us to the very gist of the whole matter, namely, that for each individual case, whatever the seeming, to right vision,—the judgment that has taken in the whole cycle of experience,—absolute loyalty to God is always the line of least resistance, since it enables us to forestall that self-entrenchment which error otherwise secures, and interdicts that inertia of habit which, as Science teaches us, must some time be entirely overcome.

Things do not accomplish themselves, they do not "happen," either in this world or the next; hence there is very much to be done, and this is one of the splendid things about Christian Science, that it is a concrete and continuous stimulus to noble doing. It so awakens and inspires men that very many of those who were once looking about for an easy job are now standing in their own place, doing their duty in a manly way, and with a song upon their lips, though human sense might call their work hard and commonplace. They have gained a glimpse of the highlands ahead, and they are entirely sure that they are on the safest and shortest way home.

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