Editorial April 30, 1921 Issue

"When I awake"

GUSTAVUS S. PAINE

THOSE who seem satisfied to continue their wonted modes of thinking and acting may question as to whether it is really desirable to comply with disturbing demands for greater awakeness. Human complacency dislikes to be aroused. Indeed, how is one to know that some one else's concept of alertness and vigor is worth making any effort for? The student of Christian Science has no right, of course, to impose his sense of energetic animation on others against their wish. Demonstration, rather than precept, is the effective arousal for a world of seeming inertia. Only in proportion as Christian Science proves to humanity that its expression of Principle actually means health, harmony, and happiness for those who rely on it, can it attract people to its ideals and thus lessen the ills of mortality.

When people see that Christian Science has genuine good to offer, they turn to it with gladness. Even those who may have been attacking what they have mistakenly supposed Christian Science to be, have at least been active in their thinking. In some way inaction or misdirected action must be aroused from its futility. When stubborn resistance to the truth is turned into steadfastness for the truth, as Saul was turned into Paul, it is proved that the divine Mind makes use of every positive quality. The quality of Principle is, in fact, the only quality that ever has been real.

Many who accept the general proposition that it is desirable to be awake are rightly reluctant to accept unquestioningly some one else's interpretation of what it means to be awake. Each one is entitled to prove for himself the interpretation that is true for him, for the alertness of divine intelligence is without human limitations. A sense of independence, when the truth of it is found to be based wholly on Principle, is excellent. Indeed, the very independence which may have seemed to keep one aloof from Christian Science for a time is a quality to be cherished in proportion as it is understood in its genuine meaning. Yet each one must recognize that his old human belief about independence is by no means all there is to the true idea. The free reliance on Principle is immensely broader than any human sense of independent thinking.

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