Article July 14, 1923 Issue

"Judge not, that ye be not judged"

FRANCES W. SCOTCHBROOK

All are familiar with Jesus' words, taken from Matthew, "Judge not, that ye be not judged." A casual perusal of them is apt to carry with it the impression of a threat; but upon closer study we may see a different meaning, since Paul declared, "For thou that judgest doest the same things."

Through the study of Christian Science we are learning that every outward effect has a mental cause; that whatever we allow to occupy our thought, even though it appear to be only the mistakes of others, tends to be sooner or later manifested. We also learn that evil is impersonal. It is not a part of any so-called person; and our work is to destroy the belief of evil in our own consciousness; know its utter nothingness, whether it claims to be our own thought or that of another. We are judged according to our thoughts; that is, evil brings its own supposed results and good its own reward.

A Christian Scientist once gave an illustration of this, relating the following experience. She had allowed herself to become disturbed over the indolence of another. This feeling grew by leaps and bounds, as error is wont to do when admitted into our mental homes. She found herself thinking how utterly foolish and wrong it was for this person to spend so much time in idleness. She could not understand such willful wasting of precious time by another,—and so on, as the tempter is prone to talk to us. But just at this point when, in what she believed to be righteous indignation, she was becoming more and more eloquent in her mental denunciation of another's idleness, so radical a change in her own temperament seemed to be taking place that it at first caused her no small amount of alarm. She began to feel a strong repugnance for her daily tasks. Duties were allowed to pass undone. The light housework, which before had been a pleasure, now became drudgery. Then came the awakening! She had been making the error of indolence real; had given it place in her thought; and the manifestation of it in her own case followed as a consequence.

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