God's Reviving Love

William P. McKenzie

At intervals men make good resolutions, chiding themselves for failures and inefficiencies. In retrospect the past seems dark and beclouded, and they try to imagine before them a prospect of success and brightness. They excuse past wrongs as being due to circumstances, or to the interference of other minds, and hope credulously for circumstances fortuitous, and for friends subservient, so that in consequence honor and power and glory shall accrue to the much loved self. The defect of most good resolutions and intentions is consequently this,—they leave God out of consideration. Mrs. Eddy's poem (Miscellany, p. 354) corrects this by speaking of the New Year as being

Sweet sign and substance
Of God's presence here.

Every true thought regarding God has reviving and restorative power. The essence of grief, fear, anger, hate, despair, and of all unhappiness, is that it may be said of the individual so burdened, "God is not in all his thoughts." Whereas of those who return to God, the words of the prophet Hosea are perpetually true: "They shall revive as the corn, and grow as the vine: the scent thereof shall be as the wine of Lebanon. Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols?" What cares the sprouting vine for the dead and withered and castaway branches, and what cares the enlightened mind for the supersitions and follies and self-worship of the past? God is known in the reviving of life, in recuperating joy, in the sanctity of holiness. The idols shall be no more considered. As Isaiah declares, "In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats." They shall be cast away and forgotten indeed, because then will come true the prophecy, "The loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day."

It is a proverb which finds repetition in many languages that the way downward to the pit is paved with good resolutions. These good resolves placate conscience when that inward monitor calls for righteousness. Like the unregardful son who said, "I go, sir," and then "went not," the man asseverates intention to reform but accomplishes no repentance. But the change within called repentance, the reordering of thought, is necessary, as in the case of the really dutiful son, who, though first saying, I will not go, afterwards repented and went. The one who repented actually did the will of the father; and good resolves are good only when they become act and fact in our lives.

We read in The Acts of the Apostles that John preached "the baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel." Mrs. Eddy says (The People's Idea of God, p. 9), "Christian Science has one faith, one Lord, one baptism; and this faith builds on Spirit, not matter; and this baptism is the purification of mind,—not an ablution of the body, but tears of repentance, an overflowing love, washing away the motives for sin; yea, it is love leaving self for God." This repentance means not loss, disadvantage, humiliation, but rather advantage, blessing, gladness, for to greet the repentant one there is God's promise given through Hosea, "I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely . . . I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon."

It is in this aspect that God is revealed to man by Christian Science, because its method of affording proof is not the theological or ecclesiastical method of authority and human control, but the spiritual and scientific method of healing. The coherence of the movement is due to the fact that those healed are united in the understanding of the one God and dwell comfortably in the sense of God's presence. It is new year, new day, new joy, new life, with them continually, because God's presence is the fountain of life and gladness and love, for their perpetual reviving. They know better than to drink of the earthly springs, whereof drinking a man finds his thirst become more poignant and unslakeable. Dwelling "in the secret place of the most High," the people of God find contentment, for it is home indeed—home with all its wonderful provision for the need of every member therein. As many, then, as will say in their New Year resolves only this: "I will arise and go to my father," will find that God's word of welcome is, "I will love them freely."

The everlasting mercy of God is at this hour calling the whole world to repentance with just this fact of healing, saying, "I will heal their backsliding." The scribe inditing these lines knows this to be true for him as well as for every one on earth to-day. One more year of earth's history now closes, but hope and faith are expecting that which Mrs. Eddy once described (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 44) as "a great revival of mutual love, prosperity, and spiritual power." Christian Scientists, let us unite to this end, that the world may know a "happy" New Year!

William P. McKenzie.

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Newness of Life in Christ

January 3, 1920

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