Article September 11, 1920 Issue

Veritas

LINDA GERMOND BAKER

We are taught the value of education through all of Mrs. Eddy's writings. "Academics of the right sort are requisite," she says on page 195 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" and then she defines what the right sort is. "Observation, invention, study, and original thought are expansive and should promote the growth of mortal mind out of itself, out of all that is mortal." Already she has declared that "whatever furnishes the semblance of an idea governed by its Principle, furnishes food for thought. Through astronomy, natural history, chemistry, music, mathematics, thought passes naturally from effect back to cause." Whatever teaches us to know our fellow creatures better, whatever helps us to think logically and clearly, whatever makes us see new beauties in everything about us—to enjoy all true good—is education of the right sort, and how very grateful we should be if it has been our privilege to have received its advantages. Just the other day the opportunity for being one of two thousand alumni at a great public college was the writer's. Years before, she had glimpsed the value of education and had been impelled to seek with all her heart to know, and thus she was led with thousands of others to the educational institution where she began to get larger views. The class motto had been Veritas, and now at the reunion she pondered upon the word; for Truth had been wonderfully revealed to her in Christian Science. She was disturbed, however, by the noise and confusion about her. The chairman of the meeting was trying in vain to be heard. At last there was a semblance of order and the program began, but a few hours of it was enough for the one who knew somewhat of the peace and the bigness of Veritas as the divine Mind comprehends it. A few blocks away, in the ballroom of a large hotel, there was to be another gathering and it was to that the writer betook herself.

Although it was early when she arrived she was glad to enjoy the interval of quiet before the time appointed for the lecturer to appear. Silently the immense room filled until there were as many in it as had been in the college chapel, and yet there was no noise, only the soft hum of many happy voices until the speaker of the day and the gentleman who was to introduce him stepped to the platform. Not a word was spoken audibly by either of them but there must have been an utterance of the "peace, be still" of Truth, for almost immediately there was silence. These people had come to be educated; they were seeking a knowledge of God, the only, the All, the absolute truth of all things, and they could not afford to lose one word. Why? Because the education they were to receive promised to be most practical for them. They had been told that it would solve all kinds of human problems, it would heal heartaches, it would cure the sick, it would free the sinner, and give rest to the weary, it would enlarge one's capacity for real accomplishment; in fact, it would begin to make all things new, even their old sense of education. And that audience wanted to hear the lecturer. Why should they not? They wanted to know about the Science of living, or Christian Science.

How indeed has Veritas been revealed to the waiting thousands of the twentieth century? Years ago Plato, Socrates, Luther, Wesley, Shelley, Eliot, John Fox, Tennyson, Lincoln, and every other earnest seeker caught visions of Veritas or Truth, but it was for us of the present day to behold its radiance, and what do we intend to do with it? That is the question. Are we going to use its fullness as our fathers used its first beams? Shall we remake the world with its power or are the centuries-old wrongs to continue? Shall not each one of us answer this question for himself, and if the reply is as God would have it will there be "wars and rumours of wars," or famines, or sorrow and pain in the twenty-first century?

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