Article July 24, 1920 Issue

The Certain Sound of Truth

GERTRUDE J. PERKS

In the fourteenth chapter of I Corinthians Paul says, "If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?" Paul is pointing out in this chapter how important it is to have a clear and definite understanding of Truth, a knowledge and understanding of that Principle which is always Love and which, being God, is always good, therefore producing thoroughly certain sounds.

For those in the world to-day who are believing in many minds and listening to uncertain sounds, nothing is stable or definite. Believing equally in evil as in good, they are therefore confused. It is this dual condition, this belief in good and evil, that the apostle James tells us is unstable in all its ways,—double-mindedness. Good and evil cannot abide together. Mrs. Eddy tells us in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 270), "If one is real, the other must be unreal." While believing both these opposites real, we have no standard before us, we are longing for something steadfast, but cannot find it, whichever way we turn; we stand on the shifting sands of human belief, and fear is the result, causing us to act wildly and at random. When believing that there are as many minds as there are people, we spend time in thinking what will be done, and in trying to get away from something disagreeable, always replacing evil with evil; or, indulging in some desire either in accordance with another mind or against it, we are spent in an effort to bring about what seems good to us, but which another may, with equal assurance, believe is evil. Indulging in such erroneous thinking, we make no progress but work ever around in a circle, in a maze of desires, always striving to force our desires upon others, who seem to have a wish to enforce their desires upon us, and thus we are tossed to and fro, like a weaver's shuttle.

In the allegory in Genesis, it was the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that caused Adam and Eve to be turned out of the Garden of Eden, while the sword of Truth guarded the gateway which led back into the paradise of good. Truth gives no uncertain sound; there is nothing indefinite or unstable in Truth. It is the knowledge of God and His creation, a true, exact knowledge of all that really is. There are not many minds. There is one Mind and that Mind is always good. Did not Christ Jesus say, "If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light"? In Truth, man being idea in divine Mind can only be conscious of that Mind and What that Mind knows.

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