Article January 15, 1921 Issue

The True Incentive

LILLIAN E. DAVIS

Webster defines the word "incentive" as: "That which incites, or has a tendency to incite, to determination or action." Hence it follows that every decision or activity has its incentive. The nature or value of the decision or activity reveals the nature and value of the incentive, so that it is clear that the incentive to harm is evil, while the incentive to help is unselfish and good. What is generally termed the enthusiasm of youth often has actuating it the incentive or desire to attain to some human possession or accomplishment, while the frequent lack of enthusiasm of so-called old age may be due to the belief that one's ability to attain or one's opportunity to possess is exhausted. Now even though during youth such incentive may be unselfish and praiseworthy and may be fraught with boundless good for humanity, still, the fact that it wears out when one needs it most proves that there is something lacking in its nature and foundation.

Mrs. Eddy defines the true incentive as follows, on page 454 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," the textbook of Christian Science. She says: "Love for God and man is the true incentive in both healing and teaching." And a few pages farther on she follows this with another sentence which links indissolubly the all-inclusive activity of "living" with "healing" and "teaching." In speaking of the duty of the Christian Scientist, she says (p. 458), "He must prove, through living as well as healing and teaching, that Christ's way is the only one by which mortals are radically saved from sin and sickness." Thus, she makes it clear that "love for God and man is the true incentive" for every decision and action.

True incentive is prayer. It is "the longing to be better and holier" of which Mrs. Eddy writes in speaking of the true incentive,—our love for God,—on page 4 of Science and Health. The whole quotation is as follows: "Simply asking that we may love God will never make us love Him; but the longing to be better and holier, expressed in daily watchfulness and in striving to assimilate more of the divine character, will mould and fashion us anew, until we awake in His likeness." Now this incentive can never wear out. It will sweeten, purify, and strengthen the accomplishments of youth and enrich and fructify the most mature experience, just in proportion as one embodies it in unceasing prayer.

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