Editorial December 6, 1919 ISSUE

A Citizen of Zion

William P. McKenzie

How many people there are who begrudge not the expression of their faith that the world is in a bad state. If some one expresses hope for its recovery or faith in the inevitable triumph of righteousness, they look askance and think they cannot change their fixed faith in trouble, sorrow, and confusion. Now one can take either the material outlook or the spiritual look within. He can view evil as real and sit in condemnation upon half the population of the world because of its injustice to the other half, and so deepen his cynicism, or he can look within and estimate his own experiences of God's goodness. He can thus improve his faith in God so as to be able to cherish hope for others. When the disciple spoke of all the provision they had in sight being five barley loaves and two small fishes, he quickly added, "What are they among so many?" But the Master, taking the spiritual view, revealed the abundance of good in such a way that the multitude was satisfied.

Here and there in this day may be seen disorder; men are wrecking, burning, destroying the property of others, and looting the visible things which they covet; but they are inevitably forced to say, How futile these stolen goods are to meet the needs of the multitude; and they will be further forced to see that by production not destruction, by loving-kindness not by hatred, will the needs of the many be adequately met. In other words, it must be necessarily discerned that when men find good within they will then manifest such activities as will make this good become common good and bless all.

Since early Christianity, which freed both slave and master, one from fear and unjust suffering, and the other from fear and pride in injustice, nothing has influenced the world so beneficently as Christian Science has done, and for the reason that it has directly and adequately provided the remedy for the individual need. As early Christianity touched the individual life first, so does Christian Science deal with human beings, not en masse as so many "hands" or such and such a number of "souls," but as individual children of God. Such words as conversion, repentance, regeneration, sanctification, may be useful enough in trying to describe what takes place, but the simple word "healing" is perhaps the best one to indicate the change. How adequately this was expressed by the blind man healed at the temple gate when he said. "One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see." So the sick variously say: Whereas I had ill health, now I am well; whereas I was embittered and hateful, now I love my neighbor; whereas I knew not God, now in my heart is the heaven of love for God and man.

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