Article July 3, 1920 Issue

The only reason for right doing is because it is right

The Christian Science Monitor

The only reason for right doing is because it is right. The old familiar proverb, "Honesty is the best policy," is absolutely true, not because it pays best to be honest; a man who is honest for such a reason is fundamentally dishonest, but because honesty is the only policy for the man who understands what Principle means. "Notwithstanding in this rejoice not," Jesus said unto the seventy disciples, when he impressed upon them the power of good over evil, "that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven." Rejoice, that is to say, not in any human pride of power, but in the sense of power inherent in the fact that, as Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 276 of Science and Health, "Man and his Maker are correlated in divine Science, and real consciousness is cognizant only of the things of God." The power of the seventy came, in other words, not from any personal authority or human knowledge, but from the authority an understanding of Principle bestows, which understanding rests in the fact that the real man is inseparable from the Mind which created him, and is himself the reflection of the omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence of Principle.

Some perception of this supreme fact must have been present to the centurion, when he said to Jesus, "For I also am a man set under authority," so contrasting his human authority over the men under his command, an authority derived from Caesar, with the divine authority derived by the Galilean carpenter from Principle, and dominant over sin, disease, and death itself. Herein, as a matter of fact, lay the honesty of the centurion, that he was not induced by vanity to attribute the authority of Rome to himself, and so was able to understand the divinity of the power demonstrated by Christ Jesus. A few years later there was to be born, in Spain, a Roman rhetorician who one day was to give to the world the germ of its much misunderstood proverb. "Dedit hoc providentia hominibus manus, ut honesta majis juvarent," wrote this Quintilian, "Providence has made men this gift, that the things which are honest profit them more than those which are not." Thus the Roman centurion realized that the authority of Principle was sufficient to heal his servant without the presence of Jesus, and so Jesus warned the seventy not to take credit for any healing they might be the means of accomplishing, unto themselves, but to rejoice in the understanding that healing was possible because the real man, the image and likeness of Principle, could not be separated from Principle, and so never could be sick.

In the understanding of that simple metaphysical fact lies all true humility. Jesus' demand for the recognition of the Messiah as a man "smitten of God, and afflicted" enraged the Pharisees, who could only see a Job covered with boils in such an ideal, whilst their pride demanded a Joshua or a Gideon. On the other hand, in their dense materiality, they could see nothing but blasphemy in his claim to be a son of God. It is thus always with those who mistake the letter of the law for the spirit; who pay tithe of mint, and anise, and cummin, and forget judgment, mercy, and faith; who strain at gnats and swallow camels. In their hurry to condemn, they forget that the prerequisite of righteous judgment is an already demonstrated ability to heal the sick. That is why the precept of the pulpit has for centuries made so little appeal to Christendom. Christendom was founded by a preaching church certainly, but by a preaching church whose sermons were miracles. "When the omnipotence of God is preached and His absoluteness is set forth," Mrs. Eddy says on page 345 of Science and Health, "Christian sermons will heal the sick." The setting forth of His absoluteness is, of course, the demonstration of the omnipotence of good, in the practical overcoming of everything which is not of Principle.

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