Article November 27, 1915 Issue

"The longing to be better"

SAMUEL GREENWOOD

If asked how good he would like to be, the average Christian would probably indicate that nothing less than perfection would satisfy him; but just how hard the average person is willing to work, or how much he is prepared to sacrifice to attain that ideal, is a vastly different matter. No doubt every Christian at times aspires to walk in the footsteps of his Master, but the general and prolonged neglect of Christendom to obey some of his most insistent commands shows how self-satisfied is the thought of mortals. So long as life and harmony are believed to depend upon so-called material sense, mankind will continue apathetic toward spiritual things; hence the declaration of Truth to that false sense, "I came not to send peace, but a sword."

Students of Christian Science realize that divine Principle will not make mortals better merely for the asking, any more than the science of numbers will make one a mathematician for a like reason. All Christians have learned that petitioning for holiness does not make men holy, and this should arouse them to see that more than prayer is required of them, and that is active service. The problem of redemption from evil is as individual as the problem of redemption from errors in numbers, since the rule is as definitely established in one case as in the other. "We have only to avail ourselves of God's rule," Mrs. Eddy writes, "in order to receive His blessing" (Science and Health, p. 3); and a rule implies conditions to be met and an unvarying standard to which one must conform.

While the desire for a better life necessarily precedes reformation, that end is accomplished only as right desire becomes active. Expecting the Principle of goodness to make one better without the individual's cooperation is not more sensible or practical than to sit beside the bath and expect the water to make one clean. We know that one might sit there until the water dried up without experiencing the cleansing process, unless the desire to be clean was put into effect. In like manner the truth of man's spiritual being and eternal likeness to God, as taught and demonstrated by Christ Jesus and as declared today in Christian Science, is ready to make mankind whole to the degree that they avail themselves of it. Truth is always present to deliver mortals from error, but obviously they must come to know it and understand it and use it in order to realize that deliverance.

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