Editorial February 17, 1912 Issue

"WITH WHAT MEASURE YE METE."

John B. Willis

The discovery that a very common twentieth-century habit occupies a prominent place among the things which in the book of Deuteronomy are branded as an offense to God, makes it clear that in the realm of human selfishness there is little new under the sun. The wrong referred to was a petty method of business unfairness, and the phrasing of the law of Truth respecting it reads: "Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, ... Thou shalt not have in thine house divers measures, a great and a small.... For all that do such things, ... are an abomination unto the Lord."

To the letter of this requirement the most of us may have done no violence, but when we impose upon others an ethical demand, or a test of character to which we do not daily subject ourselves; when through prejudice we fail to take all the facts into consideration and express opinions respecting a fellow man which were gained from an unfair point of view; when we condemn the representative of a race or class without knowing anything of his individual merit or demerit,—in every such instance we are guilty of this same old sin. We are meting out our thought and doing with a measure that is shaped by personal impulse, and not with the one true measure of golden rule fairness. This is the great social and economic wrong of Christian history, its unbrotherliness, its indifference to the rights of many, and it is the clearer recognition of this wrong which gives force to the present world-wide demand that every man have a fair chance. When men have been killed, perchance by some concrete phase of injustice, all are ready to say, "Poor fellows!" but while they are here with us how easy to be selfish toward them, or to repeat the stigma of somebody's thoughtlessly unkind remark about them! How easy to rest content, though we know they haven't half a fair chance.

"With what measure ye mete." These words are written over the portals of that judgment-hall which no man may pass by on the other side, and they remind us that true self-interest is never at variance with righteousness, with the interests of good, a fact which the illuminations of Christian Science help one mightily to perceive. The error which would blind us is subtle. It speaks largely of personality, it champions the conventional, the exclusiveness of caste, and would have us forget the Master's "Judge not, that ye be not judged." It would have us rejoice in our comforts and opportunities, and not be anxious or unhappy about the struggle of the millions; in a word, it would have us crucify the spirit of the Master afresh. Christian Science at once makes demand that error, all stumbling, whether wilful or not, shall be separated in our thought from personality, and that we shall have such sincere and intelligent compassion toward all men, such a love for them, as will lead us to use a just measure in our every relation to them. When we are awakened to the fact that we are all subject to the assault of a common enemy, the seemingly more serious serfdom of some can but make stronger appeal to our kindly instincts, and we shall see, as we have not before, that he alone is truly fitted to judge who is able to heal.

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