Editorial February 1, 1913 Issue

STRENGTH AND STRUGGLE

John B, Willis

If one were to ask the average twentieth-century business man how to win success, he might elicit the single word "Hustle." If a professed Christian, he might answer, "By prayer, pluck, and persistence," and the fact that he would thus assign so large a share of the credit to one's exhibition of insistent energy, would be due to the very general acceptance of the teaching that the struggle and tragedy of human life is a natural and inevitable order.

In their every-day life some Christian people emphasize St. Paul's urgency that we rely on "the whole armor of God;" others give prominence to St. James' consideration for good works, but practically all think of their struggles with temptation and sickness as working together for good and therefore as having their place in the educational scheme appointed for their betterment. They think that courage, patience, endurance, etc., are to be acquired in this way; that they pertain to the technique of that fine living which develops the muscle of true manliness; that strength always means struggle.

In a sense all this is true. St. Paul correctly describes the attainment of spiritual good as a wrestling. There seems to be no excellence for most people without great labor, but we do well to remember that this struggle is for the most part imposed by human ignorance and not divine requirement. It is a seemingly severe saying, but quite true, that "only fools have to learn by experience." "A prudent man," saith the proverb, "foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself; but the simple pass on, and are punished." In the teaching of Christ Jesus and Christian Science it is made clear that true progress comes through obedience to divine law and not through the experience of hard knocks, and when one compasses this fact he begins to give his attention to this law of intelligence, and is instructed thereby. In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes: "Through toil, struggle, and sorrow, what do mortals attain? They give up their belief in perishable life and happiness;" and she further says that "When understanding changes the standpoints of life and intelligence from a material to a spiritual basis, we shall gain the reality of Life, the control of Soul over sense, and we shall perceive Christianity, or Truth, in its divine Principle" (pp. 536, 322), thus strikingly contrasting negative and positive good.

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