Article August 13, 1910 Issue

THE MESSAGE

ALBERT L. MC BRIDE.

A message was coming to me over the telephone when a confusion of sounds rushed in to drown the speaker's voice. The friend was asked to wait a moment, until there should be less noise on the wire. The request was made in tones which probably expressed some of the impatience felt toward the occasion of the interruption. The noise was evidently on the telephone wire, and the impatient thought was of the management that would permit such confusion on this avenue of conversation. The moment of waiting, however, gave time for a mental analysis of the situation. The noise on the wire continued, but there were also sounds from the street to be heard in the din. Certainly those were the same noises, and the open transmitter in my hands was letting them be carried to the receivers at both ends of the line.

It was a simple situation, the work of a moment to see and remedy the evil, but it gave opportunity to impress a needed lesson. The first and simplest lesson was that of care in the use of the telephone, to avoid leaving it open to the transmission of sounds which are discordant and disturbing, as it should receive and transmit only such sounds as are desirable. A second lesson was of deeper meaning, and has come up to me oftener. In any situation to which I am a party there comes a like responsibility. It is my duty to let into the situation only that which accords with the message and the result to be attained. There may be much at hand which is adverse to the cause, as there was much of confusion in the noisy office, much to exclude from the message. The part of excluding all else may be the chief-work of him who would receive the message of Truth. No sense of discord should be allowed to disturb one's thought, or to drown "the still small voice." Error may be excluded by as slight an effort as the telephone transmitter was guarded. The message which we are all eager to receive is the divine message, "Be still and know that I am God;" or possibly that of the angel host, "On earth peace, good will toward men."

Every conscientious Christian Scientist would be a receiver and a transmitter of these messages. The great work to be done, in every individual case, is along the line of this simple experience of a moment. Can we listen too intently, or give out too faithfully the message of Truth to this age?

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