Editorial March 25, 1911 Issue

THE FRUIT OF RIGHT ENDEAVOR

Archibald McLellan

In the early experience of most Christian Scientists there comes a time when they are so wonderfully impressed with the healing work that is being done for them and for others,—when they awaken to the realization that the power of Truth to heal is available today as it was in the time of the Master and his disciples,—that they simply bubble over with enthusiasm in their happiness over this new-found faith, and are eager to right every seemingly wrong condition in health or in morals among their friends, believing that all there is to do in order to accomplish this is to tell them of what they have themselves seen and heard.

Sometimes the awakening is a rude one, and they are grieved at the repulse which their well-meant efforts have met, forgetting that not all are ready to give credence to the word of even a very dear friend, if what is said tends to upset a preconceived and cherished belief of the one who is addressed. Even as the husbandman does not cast his seed in the unprepared ground, so the young Scientist must wait until favoring conditions have opened the way for the seed of Truth, until his friends, roused to the inadequacy of their present belief when material means have failed them in their extremity, will welcome the truth that makes free from the bondage of sin and sickness.

Again, the enthusiast may find that objection is made to Christian Science on the ground that it demands too much of its adherents,—that they are expected literally to work out their own salvation. Then comes the temptation to make Christian Science so easy that it will be accepted in what might be termed a sugar-coated form. We do well if we firmly resist this temptation, which is one of the most subtle with which Christian Scientists have to deal. Christian Science controverts many of the most cherished beliefs of mankind, beliefs into which they have been educated by generations of thinking along materialistic lines instead of spiritual, and we forget that the process of sugar-coating Christian Science—modifying this or that condition—to make it acceptable to the person who seems wedded to such beliefs, is really an adulteration which, like most adulterations, does harm instead of good.

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"TEACH US TO PRAY"
March 25, 1911
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