Editorial October 13, 1917 Issue

Adaptation

Annie M. Knott

A prominent educator once said that a very important element of progress is adaptation, or the faculty to adjust one's self to changed conditions. This faculty is really indispensable to growth, and implies a ready response to the overturning of all things around us on the human plane until the perfect, divine idea is expressed. We may remember that St. Paul once said, "I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry." Then follows the secret as to how this may be accomplished: "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me."

It is well to remember that all growing things must adapt themselves in a very vital way to their surroundings. Dead things make no response to this law of growth. The stone may seem to increase in size but it does not grow; whereas all things which reflect Life do so, for, as our Leader tells us on page 520 of Science and Health, "growth is the eternal mandate of Mind." It is therefore our high privilege to respond to this mandate and to find the operation of the law of Love, through which "all things work together for good to them that love God." This law of adaption is wonderfully illustrated in the whole earthly experience of Moses. Owing to the hard vicissitudes of the time, he was separated from his earthly parents, who doubtless desired above all else to have him taught what they themselves knew about God and His law; but for many years it seemed as if these hopes were being entirely frustrated. The young child was taken to the home of a heathen princess and received his early training in ways which appeared to lead far away from the pure monotheism of the Hebrew patriarchs.

For a season Moses seemed to enjoy without question the splendors of the Egyptian court, but the time came when the spiritual idea of manhood with all that this implies rose up in protest against cruelty and wrong, and so we find him a homeless wanderer, and then a humble shepherd tending sheep in the wilderness. That he had undoubtedly learned the lesson of adaptation, which makes every lesser thing subservient to the one great purpose of life, is evident throughout the entire record of Moses' experience. Once indeed we find him hesitating, when he was bidden to return to Egypt in order to be the liberator and leader of his people on their way to the promised land, but he was soon obedient to the divine behest. The story is so well known to all students of the Bible that it need not be repeated, but there is distinct evidence that Moses never ceased to adapt himself to the changing conditions around him and thus was constantly responsive to the law of growth. We read that when he was an hundred and twenty years of age "his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated,"and in the psalms we are told that God "made known his ways unto Moses."

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