Editorial February 13, 1915 Issue

Fulness of Life

John B. Willis

Every one wants to be happy, and though the many have not thought the matter out, there is an indefinite yearning for that fulness, that completion of life which will insure the coveted satisfaction. Whatever experience may have brought of poverty and pain, it is universally felt that life should mean freshness and strength, blossoming and fruitage. It is interesting, therefore, to find this fulness of life so frequently referred to in the Scriptures as normal and obtainable.

It is yet more interesting that the Master should have said he came that all men might have more abundant life, and most interesting of all that he should have identified the attainment of this fuller life with the fulfilment of "the law and the prophets." Christian Science reaffirms this teaching of the Master, and is proving that to know God aright is to experience here and now that fulness of joy and those "pleasures for evermore" of which the psalmist sang so long ago and for which we all so instinctively long. It teaches that all divine law makes for life not death, for joy not sorrow, for the beauty of perfection; and that this fulfilment of law which fills full the cup of life, is the unchanging will of God.

Law is the order of the activity of Love, and this once seen, the philosophy of the relation of the fulfilment of law to human happiness is made apparent. A happy life apart from love is quite unthinkable. Pleasure is always associated with the possession or attainment of that which is loved, or liked, as we say; and when God is known as Love, and law is understood to be Love's method of manifestation, then it is made perfectly clear that fulness of life must come by way of the fulfilment of law. Then man, the image of God, is seen to be a being who naturally expresses Life and Truth, Love and beauty, in so perfect a degree as to warrant those wondrous descriptive words of St. Paul respecting him, "filled with all the fulness of God."

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