Editorial September 7, 1918 Issue

Will You Be as a Star?

William P. McKenzie

Job, speaking in mournfulness regarding human life, says: "Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not." From earliest times we hear this note of sorrow over the withering flower and the fading life of mortal man. Consequently the virile word from Daniel, prophesying for the wise man real and enduring life, is worth our study. His prophecy reads, "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever."

The gardener cares for his precious bloom lest its slender stem be broken, for he believes that life is in that stem and in the roots which tie the plant to its mother earth. There is the same solicitude over man while his life is supposed to come from his body, which extends its roots into the soil of the past, nourishing itself on what has crumbled into dust, and being thus governed by curious laws of heredity. To be cut down or to languish and wither away is the inevitable fate of the mortal. The voice that called upon Isaiah to cry aloud, gives the same message to every listener: "All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field ... the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever."

Why then our toil and labor under the sun if the end is dust? We must learn that it is in the enduring word of God that our hope is. We must learn that man is not an organism merely, to be utilized as a machine and cast away, to be slain as a soldier and buried, to be worked as a slave and worn out, as cynical human philosophy believes. Man can hear the creative word of God, he can experience creation within, he can find wisdom, he can teach and bless others also. In metaphysics he appears not as a stem-supported, fragile flower that the wind can destroy, but as the star in its changeless course, supported and sustained by universal law. He knows, as the Christian Science textbook teaches, that "adhesion, cohesion, and attraction are properties of Mind. They belong to divine Principle, and support the equipoise of that thought-force, which launched the earth in its orbit and said to the proud wave, 'Thus far and no farther.' Spirit is the life, substance, and continuity of all things" (Science and Health, p. 124). Mrs. Eddy further defines the situation by saying on page 305: "Because man is the reflection of his Maker, he is not subject to birth, growth, maturity, decay. These mortal dreams are of human origin, not divine."

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