Editorial January 18, 1913 Issue

GENUINE LIVING

John B. Willis

St. Paul framed an immortal sentence when he wrote to the Philippians, "For me to live is Christ:" and in striking contrast with this definition, we may recall the last words of Rabelais: "Ring down the curtain, the farce is ended!" If one could bring together all the interpretations of life that lie between these two estimates, the one of a saint, the other of a cynic, if he could place side by side the concepts of the learned and the ignorant, the wise and the foolish, the generous and the miserly, the good and the bad, the happy and the wretchd, what an interesting collection of contradictions it would prove!

Regarding this, and all other topics, the thought of the Nazarene is sovereign. He knew life as has none other, he demonstrated its highest ideal, and speaking of nature he said that to live is "to know God," a definition which Christian Science but rephrases in its declaration that "spiritual sense is a conscious, constant capacity to understand God" (Science and Health, p. 209). In a most poetic way, Jesus further defined life, with respect to its normal manifestation upon this human plane, when he said of the growing grain, "First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." This is an epitome of the life which every true Christian Scientists is endeavoring to bring into demonstration. He has learned to think of it as a thing of beauty, as having an orderly unfoldment, and as bringing forth abundant fruit.

Beauty is inseparable from the life of the springing corn. The rich color, the polished surface of the leaves that move and glint in Gothic lines, its sturdy upright anchorage in the soil, and its no less free response "in gentle curves of courtesy" to the summer breeze,—truly it is a picture for a poet's pen, and this natural beauty pertains no less to growing men than to growing grain. To express the Christ-ideal is to be chaste, refined, unselfish, joyous, Christlike, and it is withal to be prophetic of and prepare the way for a harvest. "First the blade, then the ear." There is unfoldment, but there is no separation between cause and effect. The ear is potentially present at every stage of the process and the blade is meaningless without it. The overcoming of every evil and the exhibition of every grace of the Spirit is embraced in all true faith and aspiration. This is the insistence of Christian Science, that we are not to consent to a theoretical life, not to say in our living, "First the leaf, then more leaves." And yet how content you and I have been with this travesty of the Master's teaching!

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