Editorial September 24, 1921 Issue

Idle Words

Frederick Dixon

There was no point which Christ Jesus was more determined upon insisting than the metaphysical one that cause always approximates effect, and that the one must be judged by the other. It was easy, he declared, to tell a tree by its fruit; grapes could not be gathered from thorns, nor figs from thistles; the good tree brought forth good fruit, and the corrupt tree corrupt fruit. In the same way, he explained, a good man out of the good treasure of his heart brought forth good things, and an evil man out of his evil treasure, evil things. Therefore, he drew the conclusion, "that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." The saying, of course, is a truism, but the world is scarcely metaphysical enough to understand why. It has seen the evildoer bear false witness and lie, and apparently escape the penalty for these. It does not understand that metaphysical reasoning is not so shallow as this, and that what Christ Jesus said, be actually meant.

It is a doubtful question whether the liar or the slanderer really does at any time reap the advantage he expects from his effort. He is conscious, the whole time, of the offense of which he is guilty, and of the perpetual danger of being found out and exposed. The thief who escapes with his plunder endures the perpetual fear of being discovered. One of the best known plays of modern days represented the incessant torment of the successful murderer, though every trace of his crime had been destroyed, and half a lifetime had passed during which he had lived on the proceeds of his guilt. Conscience refuses to be dulled, wherever fear intervenes. The criminal who imagines that he has nothing to fear may harden his heart and stupefy his better nature. "The healthy sinner," as Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 404 of Science and Health, "is the hardened sinner," but, she goes on to point out, on the same page, "Hatred, envy, dishonesty, fear, and so forth, make a man sick, and neither material medicine nor Mind can help him permanently, even in body, unless it makes him better mentally, and so delivers him from his destroyers."

What Mrs. Eddy means, of course, is that envy, hatred and malice, lying and slandering, and all the other evil propensities of the human mind, affect a man physically, whether he is aware of it or not. The body is the subjective condition of the human mind, and must reflect the inharmony of that mind. If that mind is believing in sin, disease, and death, sin, disease, and death must gradually be reflected in the body. The man who believes that malice and evil speaking can achieve something for him has already so warped his material consciousness that he is incapable of reflecting harmony. He has set the seeds of death in this human consciousness, and nothing but a recognition of Principle, and a practical reformation which is repentance, can stop the ravages which they make. It is no good lightly disregarding these things and thinking their influence is nothing; they constitute the thorn which will never produce grapes, the corrupt tree which will never produce good fruit, the evil treasure of the heart which can never bring forth good things. It is quite true that the man who is hardened to iniquity may for a time be so impervious to Truth as to remain apparently untouched by the consequences of his sin. He is the healthy sinner, but even his health is precarious enough.

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