Article October 12, 1912 Issue

LOYALTY

WILLIAM D. MC CRACKAN, M.A.

Few sentiments have been so often abused as loyalty. The true sense of loyalty is so noble, and appeals so unerringly to humanity's best qualities, that the false or personal sense of it is correspondingly deceptive and therefore dangerous. That it is a human virtue to be loyal to one's family, friends, and country, is universally admitted. Among primitive peoples this quality of mind and heart often brings a semblance of order in the midst of warring individuals; it sometimes does duty as a substitute for laws and regulations, but at the same time it is apt to engender a clannish spirit and to narrow one's interests to his immediate surroundings. At its worst it foments feuds and has been known to nourish the fires of resentment and revenge, the vendetta being carried down from one generation to another.

The true sense of loyalty develops in men as they acquire ideals, and the supreme loyalty of all is loyalty to God, divine Principle, the creator and controller of the infinite number of ideas constituting the universe, including man. We may all admire the chivalric loyalty of the medieval knight to his overlord, the trained loyalty of a soldier or sailor to his superior officer, the helpful loyalty of an employee to his employer; we are justly proud of the achievements of our native land and sustain it loyally in the hour of need, but the loyalty that transcends all these lesser loyalties is devotion to God, based upon a spiritual understanding of Him as He really is. This supreme loyalty must be the aim of every student of Christian Science.

In referring to the subject of loyalty Mrs. Eddy uses the following words in "Retrospection and Introspection" (p. 50) : "By loyalty in students I mean this,—allegiance to God, subordination of the human to the divine, steadfast justice, and strict adherence to divine Truth and Love." These words virtually sum up the duties of Christian living. Here, then, under the heading of loyalty we find mapped out for ourselves a grand career, of which "allegiance to God" and "steadfast justice" to others are the leading features. It will be recognized at once that loyalty involves a correct understanding of God and man, else it is useless to expect allegiance to the one or justice to the other.

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