Editorial October 14, 1911 Issue

MIDST TURBULENCE, YET UNTROUBLED

John B. Willis

There are many Christian people who are tempted to be more or less disturbed—and some of them are Christian Scientists—in view of the fact that the many seem to be getting so far away from that peaceful pursuit of an established order which is so agreeable to human sense. In the religious as well as in the political and the economic world, disagreements and disharmonies are so pronounced today as to beget in the hearts of those who are not grounded and stablished in Truth, a sense of unrest which sometimes breeds weakening anxiety and heartache. Especially are some troubled with the fact that dissensions and divisions should have appeared in the church, to provoke in some instances the world's contempt even for the very word, Christian.

These people are right in being discontented with anything and everything which is unideal, which does not speak for the peaceful rule of Love and Truth, but they make a mistake in forgetting that assertive manifestations of opposing error have invariably attended the appearing of the Christ-idea; and more, that these phenomena are sure evidences of the presence of this idea. The uncovering of falsity by Truth, the eternal condemnation of it in human consciousness, has always seemed to excite the error though Truth's statement respecting it. "I never knew you," remains forever true; and thus, though he was the embodiment of gentle goodness, the coming of the Son of man precipitated that exhibition of passion and hatred which culminated in history's greatest tragedy.

This resistance of mortal sense to God's redemptive word has been manifested not only in the experience of every great leader of reform, including her whom Christian Scientists have occasion to love and revere beyond words, but in the consciousness of every truth-seeker. Tempers and dispositions which have remainded so latent as to have been quite undiscovered to us, perchance, may have suddenly asserted themselves in a way that surprised us as well as our observing friends, and all in evidence that the truth, to which we may have presented but a half open door, has come into our lives to turn and overturn until he "whose right it is" shall be enthroned. To understand these phenomena of error is well, to be disturbed and discouraged by them, or to make much of them in our own thought or in our intercourse with others, thus magnifying their threatened ills, is unwarranted and unwise; and here again, to follow the loving counsel, "Allow nothing but His likeness to abide in your thought" (Science and Health, p. 495), is the one way to find repose and peace.

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AMONG THE CHURCHES
October 14, 1911
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