Editorial September 26, 1914 Issue

Our Part

John B. Willis

Both self-respect and efficiency are conditioned in human experience by one's consciousness of his called and commission. The most stimulating thing that can come to a man is the conviction that he has something splendidly worth while to do, and that God stands behind him to help in the doing. The daring and devotion of heroism then becomes possible. Thus, though the psalmist ofttimes yielded to the temptation to account himself as good for nothing, when he was awakened to his privilege as a child of God he became transformed, made ready to dare and to do. He had gained the conquering consciousness, and sang with exultant joy, "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" This in part explains the uplift which Christian Science brings to the thought and feeling of men. It furnishes the proof that they have not only the opportunity but the capacity to radiate the healing truth, and thus to do the Master's works even as he commanded.

The story told in the tenth chapter of Acts shows us pertinently that though Peter had done wondrous things through faith in the name of Jesus, he was nevertheless manacled by an inherited belief that the activities of good were limited by racial distinctions. Not only was the apostle healed of this false sense by the vision vouchsafed him, but he was led to understand as never before that God, divine Principle, is revealed, becomes redemptively effective upon the human plane, in the activity of His idea. When the word spoken to Cornelius, "He shall tell thee what thou oughtest to do," and the word spoken to himself, "Arise ... and go with them, doubting nothing: for I have sent them," were duly wedded in Peter's thought, his life-work was given a new perspective, and his mouth was "opened" as it had not been, for the dissemination of the healing gospel. This enlarged perception of one's individual place and privilege in the divine order is an immediate bestowal of Christian Science. However dense one's past torpidity and listlessness, he can but be quickened into busy usefulness by the assurance that he actually figures in the program of the world's redemption.

Self-depreciation and self-excuse constitute the bivalve where weakness would fain hide itself, and they witness to two very general mistakes, the first being the failure to recognize the significance, in an organization, of minor parts to the whole. Students of nature aver that no least thing can be removed from its composite order without seriously disturbing its balance. Attention has recently been called to the report that a bee malady in England threatens to seal the fate of flowers and vegetables, since they are entirely dependent upon the "blissful burglary," as Lanier names it, of this clever little marauder, for the fertilization of their seed. What a startling fact, if so be, that the illness of an insect should threaten the starvation of a race! And yet experience often brings us the discovery of kindred dependences. Before he had acquired more than what was to him an amusing notion of the nature and significance of Christian Science treatment, the writer once rather jokingly commended it to the parents of a congenitally crippled child, and ten years after, he unexpectedly came upon the wondrous fact that, acting upon this vagrant suggestion, their little boy had been made whole under Christian Science treatment and was approaching manhood strong and well. Significant indeed are both cosmic and human relations.

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