Article September 13, 1913 Issue

The Right Side

SAMUEL GREENWOOD

The right side to any question is the only side that can honorably be taken. The wrong side in its very wrongness condemns itself as unworthy and untrue, and honesty forbids that any one should champion it. In her sermon entitled "Christian Healing" (p. 10), Mrs. Eddy points out that "there is but one side to reality, and that is the good side." The good side is God's side, and is the only right side in any case, and there can be no reasonable excuse for not taking it. There is certainly no warrant for talking on the wrong side after one has been sufficiently enlightened to know where the truth lies. Mistaught as to the nature of Life, the origin of man, and the laws of God, mortals usually, and in a sense naturally, take the wrong side of things, and so come under the influence of what they would be glad to avoid. Even Christians are sometimes led to argue on the side of evil instead of on the side of good, for error rather than against it, and then perhaps wonder why they are not more successful in overcoming it.

Christian Science is teaching humanity the better way. It places man always on the side of God, which, in relation to human experience, means that man is rightly on the side of health, happiness, and success, on the side of holiness and everlasting life. It means that we should never in word or thought take the opposite side to what is good and perfect. Despite the accumulation of false testimony, we should not plead guilty to error except in the case of wilful and conscious wrong-doing, and then only long enough for repentance and reformation. Evil has neither authority nor power to command our allegiance or our fear. It cannot compel us to honor its claims or come under its yoke. It would be considered poor policy in worldly matters to argue on the side of one's opponent, and it is even poorer policy in spiritual things, for it confers a sense of power where we least want it to be. If we are convinced that man is the child of God, hence good and perfect, we can at least remain faithful to that conviction in what we think and say.

If we fully realized that our own thought or belief is largely responsible for our discordant experiences, we should be more careful to think or affirm only what we desire to have true. We should remember that God never places man on the side of evil. God does not say that His children are poor or sick or sinful, or that they must suffer and die. It is only a sense of evil that suggests these things, and knowing this, we should not accept or repeat them. We should never be willing to declare for man's incapacity or inharmony in any direction, even though the individual concerned may be one's self. What right have we to say or think unworthy things of ourselves, while in the same breath we may declare that God is the only creator? Did not Jesus say that his Father was ours also, and do we not dishonor the Father in dishonoring the son? Is it not plain that what is true in man must first have been true of God, else it could not appear in His likeness?

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