Article October 10, 1914 Issue

Statutes and Songs

MARGARET MORRISON

The accepted definition of the word "statute" brings to thought a prohibitory decree to which a penalty is attached, a mortal concept of law. But as we are taught in Christian Science to reverse a mortal concept in order to know the spiritual fact, we see that God's statutes are not prohibitory decrees but laws of progress; laws that unfold themselves in love and beauty, ever-increasing good and glory, revealing man's divine origin and power; laws that create in our hearts songs of praise. The psalmist wrote, "Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage."

In this reversal of the material concept of law it will be seen that God's statutes neither prohibit nor command. They cannot be reversed, perverted, misconstrued, or made subservient either to human fear or desire. They are God's purpose brought down to human consciousness. Men can neither hinder nor help their operation; they can only realize man's harmony with them, and any failure to realize this harmony is due to ignorance of what constitutes God's law. When it is known that God's laws are purely spiritual, emanating from infinite Life, Truth, and Love, man will have "recourse to the spiritual and be at peace" (Science and Health, p. 329). Who would not be willing to obey the law of Love if he understood the transcendent joy and blessing of selfless service? Who would not be willing to obey the law of Life if he understood the nothingness of death, or the law of Truth if he understood the omnipotence of good? So this ignorance of the law of God, of what His statutes are, has seemed to create fear in the hearts of men, instead of songs. The curse of condemnation and penalty seems to cast its shadow over all human living, to crush out all joy, all spontaneous praise and thanksgiving to the only lawmaker, whose law commands "his lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night his song."

The understanding that there are no material laws, but only false beliefs about law, that the only force throughout the universe is spiritual, is Love, at once lifts our work into the mental realm, and we begin to see that God operates through a consciousness of divine law. The law of Love can operate only through a consciousness of love, never through a sense of fear; the law of supply only through a consciousness of supply, never through a sense of lack; the law of peace only through the consciousness of peace, never of enmity, etc. As each one endeavors to clear his individual consciousness of all ignorant superstitions and false beliefs in material law, and allows God's law to operate through his consciousness, the beauty and joy of the divine statutes will become apparent, the tenderness of Truth, the omnipotence and restfulness of law. Men will know that they cannot escape from God's law of good, that it governs immutably.

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