Editorial July 20, 1912 Issue

ALL GOOD IS

John B. Willis

There are few men, and none of parts, who do not erect and dream over their castles in Spain, who have not outlined an ideal of earthly circumstance and surroundings with which they associate the thought of happiness and satisfaction; and the difficulty of many a task, the weight of many a burden, has been temporarily lessened by this ministry of hope, the promise it gives of a sometimes success. Castle building may thus relate itself helpfully to human experience, since it may lead us to live more largely in what we long for at our best.

Hope often rekindles the flame of wholesome ambition, and yet hope long deferred does makes the heart sick, as saith the proverb, and Christ Jesus distinctly avers that the mission of faith is the fulfilment of our best hope. "I am come," said he, "that they might have life." He taught that the longing for good witnesses to its abundant supply and availability in the provisions of Providence, and Christian Science is reaffirming this truth, that disappointment and limitation have no place in the divine experience or order. The true life is forever full and free,—this the Christian world has never questioned; its fault has been an educated and wholly unwarranted sense of content with the thought of futurity respecting this life, and Science is blessing all mankind in reuniting right desire and achievement in human experience through the beginnings of spiritual demonstration.

However varied our human concepts of the goal of life, they have all been at one in positing that goal in an indefinite to be. The Christ comes to declare and demonstrate that now is the day of salvation, that the designs of God, of good, are never delayed. He thus pronounces upon our whilom content with future possibilities as out of keeping. In rebuke of the well-nigh universal thought of spiritual overcoming and possession as a far-off event, he stood for the ever-presence of being and its manifestation. More than this, he not only taught the present actuality of Love's rule, he brought it nigh, in both time and space, when he said, "The kingdom of heaven is within you," within the you it is yours to be, today; and this being true, spiritual consciousness becomes a "present possibility," as Mrs. Eddy has stated (Science and Health, p. 574).

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

ALL GOOD IS

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access