Article May 13, 1911 Issue

THE VALUE OF PERSISTENCE

S. A. PFUHL.

St. Paul wrote to the Galatians: "Let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." So long as we interpret happiness in terms of materiality, these words do not seem true to us. While happiness means for us an abundance of worldly possessions, worldly pleasures and honors, the heroic lives of prophet and apostle, of Socrates, Spinoza, and even that of Christ Jesus, will seem to have failed of their reward. There comes a time, however, in the lives of all of us when the emptiness of the things of material sense is made clear to us; a time when material things are weighed in the balance and found wanting. There is then only one way out of despair, and that is to turn to spiritual reality for our happiness,—even to that world shown to us so scientifically in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy.

When once we have learned to look for a spiritual reward for our "well doing," the words of St. Paul appear to us in a new light. We now feel, no doubt, that all who persist in well doing (and well doing to the Christian Scientist means, of course, that he loves God, Spirit, first and his neighbor as himself) must obtain the highest and only real reward that can be given. Christian Scientists may not always gain riches, material pleasures, and material comforts, but all sincere seekers after Truth must receive from day to day more of the gifts of God, such as courage, strength, hope, peace,—all the fruits of overcoming, including the "joy that comes of sense resigned." The followers of Christ may be misunderstood, scorned, and even persecuted by their blind fellow-men, but if only they faint not, they must reach that spiritual height which enabled St. Paul to say, "None of these things move me."

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