Article March 22, 1913 Issue

TRUE WITNESS

FLORENCE E. B. DONALDSON.

The light which Christian Science throws on the ten commandments is so illuminating that the limited, material meaning attached to them by the teaching of the schools is changed into what seems an illimitable statement of spiritual law. Meditating upon the ninth, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor," we listen to what, as yet, we do not perfectly hear. The question, "And who is my neighbor?" was answered by the Master both by parable and precept; but not until the letter and the spirit of Christian Science was revealed through our beloved Leader did we perceive that false witness against our brother man includes any word or thought which denies the perfect reflection of the perfect God. Truth has opened our understanding. The desire to separate all error from our thought of our fellow man, to see him only as our Father's image, can, as we know, be truly voiced by those alone who have penetrated within the veil and are communing with Spirit in the holy of holies itself.

The unrighteous judgment of others is not the only form of false witness, however, against which we need daily to guard our thought; we must do so no less whenever self-condemnation claims to find a foothold, for this is plainly a form of false witness, since it is making a reality of the error which seeks to find a channel in our consciousness, whereby to mar the unchangeably perfect reflection of God. To see clearly along these lines, we must subdue all sense of personality; we must realize that the problems of individual experience and environment can only be solved by absolute reliance on God, by striving to perform the tasks allotted to us in the meekness and might of the Christ-idea. To become as a little child is so to cast out error that the tablets of our thought may be as a fair sheet ready to receive the impressions of Truth, and so to transmit them to others. We must strive to gain true humility, looking for guidance to God alone, patiently following in the footsteps marked out for us, dwelling in habitual obedience to the will of God, knowing that His will desires and requires good in every manifestation of His unceasing activities, in the perpetual harmony of His creation.

The record of spiritual man, made in God's image and after His likeness, as given in the first chapter of Genesis, included male and female under the one title "man." Dominion over all the earth, and all that it contained, was given equally to both; the divine blessing, and the charge to replenish and subdue the earth, was also given to both; and this teaches us that the equality of the sexes is an eternal fact in Mind, and it cannot be witnessed against in truth. But neither can there be animosity between men and women, since they are immutably at-one, co-heirs in the realm of Spirit.

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