Editorial August 25, 1917 Issue

Put Yourselves to the Proof

William P. McKenzie

When nesting time is over and the young have grown, there comes for the parent birds the anxious time when they must induce the fledglings to make a test of their own ability to fly. Some of them destroy the comfortable shelter the babes have known so long, even "as an eagke stirreth up her nest" to force the eaglets to test the supporting power of the unseen air. In the nest the little creatures are helpless and limited, the mere recipients of bounty. When they learn to fly they become birds with individuality, and power, and self-control. Almost every one, at times when enlargement of life awaits him, feels a reluctance to launch out and enter upon what to him seem unknown seas. The patient is reluctant to give up the ministry of the practitioner, the pupil is fearful when he sees that he must himself practise according to the guidance given him by his teacher,—must think for himself, and not take the easy of asking questions and expecting another to find an answer.

In the thirteenth chapter of II Corinthians the writer says: "Prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?" The meaning of the word reprobate is clarified by Jeremiah's description of the wicked: "Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the Lord hath rejected them." What is meant is, that they are dross, to be thrown away as useless. With such material, as prophet says, "the founder melteth in vain." On the other hand, where there is pure metal, the work of the molder is successful. One thing Christian Science establishes, ans that is the individuality of man. It makes him understand divine Principle, wherein and whereby man is complete. So we have in the right-thinking man rounded character, ordered conduct, and certain aim.

In heathen orgies individuality is completely lost; all the distinguishing characteristics of goodness are wiped away, and the urgings of morality are choked. The counterpart is seen in civilized countries when a crowd goes on a lynching. The hydra-headed mob is like a great beast. It has many moving parts, but it has one intent, one lust. Bestiality prosides and morality subsides, and with Caliban-like mind the horrid organism proceeds to break the sixth commandment with fiendish delight in its utter godlessness. In some idolatrous procession where the people march to the place of sacrifice, actually propelled, as it were, by drumbeat and sistrum clash, can any man express conscience if he thinks the murderous rites to be wrong; or any woman of kind heart cry out against the cruelty? The idolatrous people are all drunk with the mesmerism, and know not how to protest. Likewise in some group of men in politics, the unjust scheme decided upon goes forward, and the timid conscience is overridden and the honest heart trampled upon. The fearful heart believes that to express righteousness is to invite ruin, and is timidly acquiescent.

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