Editorial November 8, 1913 Issue

"And forget not"

John B. Willis

The history of the children of Israel is in large part the story of God's remembrance and of their forgetfulness of His covenant with them. With a frequency of reiteration which speaks for the tenacity of their indifference, the stupidity of their stumbling, they were reminded by patriarchs and prophets of God's faithfulness and compassion, and of their solemn obligations to remember His precepts to do them; nevertheless, their resistance to these appeals is chronicled again and again in these words: "And the children of Israel remembered not the Lord their God, who had delivered them."

That forgetfulness still remained a marked characteristic of the chosen race, is seen in the fact that our Lord's address to his brother Hebrews might be epitomized as a reminder of the spiritual content of their faith, from which they had turned away until it was quite forgotten; and he defined the office of the "Comforter" that was to continue his work, when he said, "He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you."

All this gives added significance to the statements on page 55 of Science and Health, in which Mrs. Eddy identifies the "Comforter" as "divine Science," that appearing of "Truth's immortal idea" in human consciousness by which we are enabled to "realize God's omnipotence and the healing power of divine Love in what it has done and is doing for mankind." The ministry of Christian Science to the church today was well expressed by St. Peter when he said to the early Christians that he sought to "stir up [their] pure minds by way of remembrance." Its spirit, and the message to all, is embodied in the one hundred and third psalm. It teaches that mortal birth and experience is as the poet says "but a sleep and a forgetting," the mesmeric stupor of false belief from which we are awakened in the coming of Christ, Truth, and it brings quickening assurance in its declaration of man's safety in that embrace of the divine consciousness to which Isaiah referred when he wrote: "Zion said, ... my Lord hath forgotten me. Can a woman forget her sucking child, ... yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee."

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