Article December 9, 1911 Issue

"E PLURIBUS UNUM."

REV. CHARLES D. REYNOLDS.

History teaches that a nation is seldom conquered by an enemy coming against it from without, so long as the people practise among themselves a large measure of righteousness, justice, virtue, humanity; and for the reason that right doing, justice, chastity, humanity, is the foundation of unity, and this unity gives strength and stability. A love for what is right and good subjugates the personal desires and begets the true humility; and unless this loyalty to right is steadily practised by individuals, there is no assured unity among them, no continuance of their communal organizations. The founders of the American government understood this when they chose for the national motto the words "E Pluribus Unum,"—one composed of many.

The significance of this thought once clearly seen, we can understand why an enemy from without is less to be feared than an enemy from within. It is the silent foe within, and not an enemy from without, that saps the vitality of institutions and nations, demoralizes its individual component units, disrupts, overthrows, devastates. Jesus taught this in that very remarkable language reported by Mark: "Whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him; because it entereth not into his heart." "That which cometh, out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit ... these evil things come from within, and defile."

Primitive Christianity presents an illustration and proof that so long as the individual consciousness continues Christian, is strong in the love of all that is good and right, opposition from without falls harmless. It was only as evil was permitted entrance into thought and fostered there, that Christianity began to be void of healing power and almost lost. Now that Christian Science is reinstating primitive Christianity, what the Christian Scientist needs to guard against more than any enemy that can come against it from without, is this enemy from within, the unfaithfulness and indifference, the self-love and self-desire that trespass upon justice, chastity, and humanity, the desire that would have a personal following, and the desire that impels us to lean upon a personal leader instead of upon God,—all this enemy within, the worldly thought and ambition, does not make for unity and strength, but for discord and division. The letter without its spirit is the worst foe a religion can have, and Mrs. Eddy aptly summarizes it thus: "There was never a religion or philosophy lost to the centuries except by sinking its divine Principle in personality" (Pamphlet, Personal Contagion, p. 5).

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

"HAVING THE HARPS OF GOD."