Article April 17, 1920 Issue

Tradition

HUGH A. STUDDERT KENNEDY

One of the most tenacious clogs on the wheels of progress has ever been tradition. The human mind, easily wearied of truth, eagerly welcomes anything which, while relieving it of the necessity of denying its very self, seems to permit a certain complacent assurance that it is concerned with holy things. The doing of certain definite acts, the fulfillment of certain definite requirements, the observance of certain forms of speech, all offer a ready way to "the accumulation of credit," infinitely preferable to the human mind to that daily and hourly effort to understand Principle, which is the essence of the teaching of Jesus, as it was of the prophets before him and since his time.

Now, every great progressive epoch in the world's history has been marked by a break with tradition. From the departure of Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees to the ministry of Jesus, and from the ministry of Jesus to the writing of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy, the great rallying point has ever been the "simplicity that is Christ." Two thousand years ago, Jesus, proving the power of Principle as no man had ever proved it before, declared that this power had been made of none effect amongst the Jews. How? By their traditions. The whole course of Jesus' ministry, indeed, was marked by a steady repudiation of tradition. "The kingdom of God," he told his disciples, "is within you." To this man, utterly free from tradition, all things were subject; as they were, in a measure, to his immediate disciples. And yet, less than four hundred years after the Ascension, tradition was so firmly enthroned again that all Christendom was making a single letter in its creed a cause of division, hatred, and bloodshed.

So it has been throughout the whole course of Christian history. John Huss, John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, Ridley, and Latimer, and men of their time, John Wesley, and many others owed their power to the glimpse of Principle which enabled them to break, in a measure, with tradition. And as it was with Abraham, with Moses, with Jesus, and all others who followed where they led, so it was preeminently with Mary Baker Eddy. No one, since the days of Jesus, broke so utterly with tradition as did the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. She restated primitive Christianity, and she, once for all, safeguarded it against tradition, for all who would follow her teaching, by revealing the great fact that Christian Science, or the Science of the Christ, rests on demonstration.

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