Editorial July 13, 1912 Issue

IT IS WORTH WHILE TO BE WELL

John B. Willis

It may be assumed that all value the comfort and freedom of health, though many live and deport themselves after a fashion which they could not commend as conducive thereto. In the event of loss of health, men are more than ready to make every material sacrifice and put forth toward its recovery every effort which they have been led to think gives promise of success. Nevertheless, the great body of the people still look upon sickness as an unavoidable phase of human experience, and in no sense discreditable to Christian profession. Moreover, the generally accepted incurability of many diseases has begotten the habit of looking upon their conditions in a kind of matter-of-fact way which has no thought of betterment, and Christian Science is effecting nothing less than revolution in awakening the Christian world to the unnaturalness and abnormality of all disease from the divine point of view. It is proving, moreover, not only that there is a spiritual healing for every human ill, but that this healing has immediately to do with the solution of the great human problems, with escape from limitation and dependence, from poverty and all its sequent ills.

All this was brought home to the writer upon the occasion of his visit to a beautiful little home, concerning which he had learned that it was designed and its building supervised from start to finish by the young lady who owns and occupies it; that she had saved and was saving from her weekly earnings the money involved, and that no inconsiderable part of it had been secured through the sale of artistic things which her clever craftsmanship had made after the regular day's duties were done. It was a pleasing story of clever pluck and womanliness and of bravely determined independence; and yet he had not heard the best of it. This active, happy girl, as he learned, was once a helpless invalid, condemned to the wearing of a steel frame, month after month, for ten long years, to make amends for what she had been led to look upon as an incurable deformity. From this pitiful enslavement her aspiring, life-loving nature had found its perfect freedom through Christian Science, and to it, therefore, as she afterward expressed it, she was indebted for "every blessed thing" she had.

Looking upon her buoyant, well-ordered life, so full of labor and achievement, and withal so encouraging and helpful to all who know her, a new sense was gained of the larger significance to human experience of this health-bringing faith, and of what it would have meant to human history, what it would mean today, if all the innocent, all the good, all who long to "be made whole," were free to fill out the full measure of useful living under the impulsion of a continuous reliance upon God's healing presence and power. A deeper sense of appreciation was also awakened of the brave woman, our Leader, who wrought in the night watches and in the day, regardless of the world's bitter comment and antagonism, to build her house upon the rock, and make it a haven for the suffering and storm-tossed of every land.

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