Article April 22, 1911 Issue

INNER MEANINGS

FLORENCE K. WOEHLKE.

In the teachings of Christian Science no lesson is more insistent than that of exact and careful thinking, the girding up of the loins of the mind, to the end that all slovenly thinking may be done away with and one's progress in understanding made secure. It is for this purpose that the Lesson-Sermons are prepared with such care and study, leading us daily, step by step, to a fuller comprehension of spiritual realities. In this orderly procedure of thought no extraneous assistance is of more value than the dictionary, for in these Lessons we find that each word has its exact and particular meaning, and in a careful study of the derivation and history of a word much light may be shed upon the significance of many an otherwise obscure passage.

The great need of careful preparation was brought home recently through the mispronunciation of a word in the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah, eighth verse, "Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward." This beautiful verse, so full of comfort and promise, has appeared several times in our Lesson-Sermons, but only recently has a true sense of its meaning been revealed through the right pronunciation and definition of a word so commonly mispronounced as almost entirely to obliterate its message. The word referred to is the final word of the verse—"rereward,"

Were this a mere error of pronunciation it would be less worthy of mention, but in this case the mispronunciation amounts to the actual change of a meaning which is too inspiring thus to be lost sight of. Not once only, but on several different occasions, this word has been pronounced re-reward, the meaning conveyed to the writer being merely an added reward, a strengthening or emphasis of the idea of reward. In this meaning, however, something seemed lacking; therefore, upon the reappearance of the verse in the Lesson "Are Sin, Disease, and Death Real," the dictionary was consulted and disclosed the following definition: "rereward—(rear-wârd) rear-guard." It certainly was an illumination, for on examining the verse in the light of this understanding an entirely new meaning is discovered.

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