Article November 20, 1915 Issue

Unity of Law

COL. WILLIAM E. FELL

The requirement of today is a fuller recognition of the unity, the completeness or spherical nature of the Christian Science movement; the fact that each activity of the movement has an equal importance with every other activity in relation to the whole. This completeness is to be found wherever divine Principle operates. It appears in the first chapter of Genesis, in the record of the creation or unfoldment of Truth's ideas. It is seen in the ten commandments delivered to Moses on Sinai, and is just as complete and binding today as when revealed to the seer, for each commandment, from the first that declares God's allness and oneness, is found to be the complement of the one preceding it and of all the others.

We see that the keeping of one commandment involves the keeping of all; and conversely, to break one commandment is to violate all. The Bible says: "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all." If it is incumbent upon us to keep the commandment "Thoushalt not commit adultery," it is obligatory to keep the commandment "Thou shalt not steal;" and if we must not steal, neither may we violate the commandment "Thou shalt not kill," and so on right through the decalogue.

The ancients through ignorance failed to grasp the unity of law, and found it very difficult to keep even its letter, to say nothing of its spirit. Christ Jesus therefore placed a line of defense about it which we call the Sermon on the Mount, this line of defense being as a halo of light,—the light of Love. Not alone round the whole did Jesus place this halo of light, but round each individual commandment. For example, let us take the commandment just mentioned, "Thou shalt not kill." Jesus neither abrogated nor qualified this or any other commandment, but he supplemented and strengthened it with the golden rule,—to do to others as we would have others do to us; to love our neighbors as ourselves; never to return evil for evil,—and he clasps the golden circlet of Truth round the whole with the explicit order to leave all judgment in the hands of God.

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