Article October 11, 1913 Issue

"What lack I yet?"

LENA M. HALL

It is impossible to read the account of the rich young man who came eagerly to Jesus inquiring what he should do to inherit eternal life, without a feeling of great compassion for the keen disappointment which he must have suffered. Confident of his own integrity, he anticipated only the Master's word of approval. That Jesus himself felt a tender compassion for the young man who believed himself rich because he had great material possessions, is evidenced by the statement, "Then Jesus beholding him loved him."

Out of this great love the Master discerned and revealed to the eager questioner the one thing which he still lacked, with the result that he "went away grieved." The disciples' attitude toward this incident, their wonderment that their Master referred to this young man as one belonging to a class which found it hard to "enter into the kingdom of God," is not unlike the attitude of many today who are filled with amazement, because some seemingly worthly and upright people do not receive immediate healing through Christian Science. "Why is it," they will ask, "that some who have so many good qualities, who try so hard to do right and to 'keep the commandments,' have to wait for healing, while others who are confessedly sinful in their tendencies often receive it so quickly?"

To this apparently natural query there can be but one reply, and it is this, that the sum of all inherited or acquired human goodness is not sufficient to heal a single case of disease, since, as our Leader says, it is "the recognition of infinite Love which alone confers the healing power" (Science and Health, p. 366). Who will be most likely to have this recognition? Will it be the one who, clasping close his "great possessions" of personal goodness, waits for the reward which he believes he justly merits, or he who, turning with utter loathing from the material sense of selfhood, sees his only hope in the infinite goodness of God? Do we not all remember that in the parable of the Pharisee and the publican the latter "went down to his house justified rather than the other"?

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