Truth, Selective and Saving

John B. Willis

To see a great magnet gather the nails and other bits of metal out of the rubbish of a steel mill, is to witness a wonderful question-awakening phenomenon, and find an illuminating illustration of the selective drawing-power of the spiritually-minded, the men and women who, securely linked to God, are expressing that discriminating activity of divine Love which is no less considerate and judician than it is outreaching and irresistible. The magnet is vitalized, given its very being through its representative relation and inherent responsiveness. In all that it is and does it is but a means for the expression of an unmeasured and inscrutable force.

As with the magnet, so with man as understood in Christian Science. In touch with divine Principle, his perception and power are God-bestowed, hence authoritative and dominant. This is the significance of St. Paul's great phrase, "Christ in you, the hope of glory." The truth voiced through man speaks for the divine presence, since "God is not separate from the wisdom He bestows" (Science and Health, p. 6). Christ Jesus declared that he came to do the works of God, and he further said that every Christian believer was to continue to manifest the divine power. This teaching respecting a Christian's authority and resources as an agent for God, has always been theoretically accepted, but only so, and Christian Science has come to make savingly practical this relationship, to demonstrate the almightiness of the word of Truth, when spoken by one who is spiritually linked to God.

Our illustration presents yet another no less interesting thought, namely, that every man of God is to manifest His "hidden wisdom." He is to see and to save every product and outgrowth of that Light which, as St. John has said, "lighteth every man that cometh into the world"; that not only sages and poets, but the common people in so far as they have been impelled by humility and nobility of aspiration, have gained something of good. He is to see the noblest and truest in human consciousness and discriminatingly appeal to it.

This selective capacity of the spiritually endowed relates them in the most significant way to human interests. Every man's experience must now have in it something of the romance of discovery. In the rubbish and débris of this earth-life, glimpses of truth, bits of real goodness and beauty, are to be found; and to perceive them is not only to experience a new interest in the commonplace, and thus to brighten and enrich ordinary events and things, it is to become the interpreter of every phase and aspect of experience to men, the interpreter of character and conduct, of the nobler impulses and insights of men, as expressed in literature and law. It is to come upon the real values in nature and art, the drama and even the tragedy with which we have to do, and it is this fact which institutes our redemptive relation to all these departments of human thought and life.

Christ Jesus was able to see relics of good in those who were classed as publicans and sinners, and this explains in large part his wonderful influence over them. This good he appealed to with that tactful frankness which naturally pertains to the man of vision, as instanced in his address to the woman at Jacob's well, and he thus cast up a highway for Truth's coming and rule. The need of this truth-discovering insight, this heart-drawing power in all who would help humanity, is imperative, and Christian Science is supplying it in a way and degree which gives an entirely new aspect to the question of the world's redemption. The magnet discovers and draws everything after its kind, and the lesson is clear that if we would see and evoke the good in others, it must be our own prepossession. Christ enthroned in us determines the question of our capacity and our call to be the saviors of men.

John B. Willis.

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