Editorial January 7, 1911 Issue

FORWARD

Annie M. Knott

At the beginning of the year all earnest thinkers are listening for marching orders, and in this mental attitude the divine command to the children of Israel is of special interest. They had fled from Egypt and were encamped by the Red Sea, which apparently barred the way to further progress. In this hour of darkness and seeming peril, with their relentless foes pressing hard upon them, they began to reproach the one who had led them thus far, but Moses' response was, "Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord." It would seem as if their fear had caused them to look back toward their house of bondage, if not actually to turn thitherward; hence the command to stand still. Then came to Moses the direct order from God, "Wherefore criest thou unto me? speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward." They did so, and found that infinite wisdom had bidden them advance, and in all their subsequent history we find the eternal law of progress voicing itself through their spiritual leaders, up to the time of Christ Jesus. The pity is that it should ever have been written of any human beings that they "walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward."

Christian Scientists usually take their first steps out of Egypt (which has always typified sense domination) when aroused by suffering to seek freedom. They have learned that all attempts to gain freedom from the enslaving senses, by material means, have but added to their fetters,—the recourse to drugging, dieting, etc., making the mortal mind an abject slave to the body, until the well-nigh hopeless sufferer cries out, as did St. Paul, "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Then Christian Science comes to the rescue, and before long the erstwhile captive and sufferer joyfully declares, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." He tells how he can enjoy his food, how he can sleep, and brave the elements without fear. This is well, if the heart is filled with thankfulness to the giver of all good, but even then, and at every step of the way, the divine order is, "Go forward." It is not enough to know that we are freed from the belief in sickness, we must also be freed from the belief in sin, and the delusion that happiness is in anywise dependent upon materiality.

It is said that a courtier once told Robert Bruce that he should bestow rich gifts upon his faithful followers when he came to the throne, but he wisely responded that this would only be to deprive them of the hardihood which had enabled them to achieve their country's freedom, and to burden them with enslaving luxuries would not add to their happiness, but would merely lessen their sense of independence. Well said St. John, "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world." Even the beauty of a flower must be seen spiritually if we are to advance from the mortal and perishable sense of things to the spiritual. It is not enough that we can, to some extent, quell the fear of disease for ourselves and others. We must go forward if we are ever to reach the goal of Christlikeness. Shall it ever be said of Christian Scientists that they are "lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;" or that, like Demas, they have forsaken Christ because of "having loved this present world"?

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