Editorial June 10, 1911 Issue

KEEPING AND HOLDING

Annie M. Knott

Throughout the Scriptures we find many references which show the necessity of holding fast the truth once gained, these words of Christ Jesus being peculiarly impressive: "Blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it." In explaining to his students his parable of the sower, he emphasizes the same truth when he likens the seed sown on good ground to the truth dropped into the soil of "an honest and good heart;" and he says that such persons, "having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience." In what are called the pastoral epistles of St. Paul, we also find numerous injunctions to "hold fast" the word of Truth; but most impressive of all these admonitions is the Master's declaration, "If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death." Is it not of the utmost importance, then, that each one should diligently "examine himself," in order to discover to what extent he is daily heeding this demand.

We are all familiar with the legal phrase "to have and to hold" as applied to property rights, but do we always remember that the gifts of God "are without repentance,"—that what He gives is never recalled, but that we may temporarily miss our blessings by our own heedlessness? The writer to the Hebrews probably had this in mind when he counseled us to give earnest heed to the truths which we hear, "lest at any time we should let them slip." The great Teacher also warned his listeners that unless they guarded carefully the good seed which had been sown, "the wicked one" might come and take it away. This wicked one Mrs. Eddy characterized as "the one evil, which declares that man begins in dust or as a material embryo" (Science and Health, p. 476). It thus happens, sometimes, that the false belief which holds to man's material origin begins to argue for material conditions, disease manifestations, even after healing has been realized in Christian Science through the understanding of spiritual law. This belief would ignore man's divine rights as the child of God, and insist upon a material origin, possibly upon the asserted law of heredity, and then is the time for the one who has experienced Truth-healing to "keep it," to hold it fast as he would a priceless treasure, for this it truly is.

Here it is important to note just what the Master taught on this point in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew. He said: "When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown." There are some who imagine that they want nothing of Christian Science but the physical healing; that is, they think so before they learn how much more than this Truth has to offer. Then when they come to see that God has spoken to this age, a great change takes place in their thought, and who would not desire to know all that he may about the message which is to be found in its majesty and power in the inspired pages of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures"? As of old (and forever), divine Love bids the thirsty to come to the living waters and find health, holiness, happiness; find, too, an understanding of the Mind whose thoughts are higher than all mortal thoughts, "as the heavens are higher than the earth." With this understanding they know how to guard the treasures laid up for them in heaven. In Christian Science we have an opportunity to "prove all things," and it rests with us to "hold fast that which is good."

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