Article September 8, 1923 Issue

Obedience

KATE W. BUCK

A Dictionary definition of the word "obedience" is "subjection to natural or rightful control;" and on page 118 of "Miscellaneous Writings" by Mary Baker Eddy is a promise, sure to be fulfilled when one obeys the one eternal divine law; namely, "Obedience crowns persistent effort with everlasting victory." There is but one absolutely natural, rightful control, and it is vested in the supreme Being, whom we call God, the Father. In the world of nature we see the symbols of the rhythmical operation of orderly divine activity. The disturbances which seem to occur there never touch the fundamentals of being, and are what Mrs. Eddy calls in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 293) the "vapid fury of mortal mind." The fury dies away, and the world goes on in much the same way as before. Evil alone dies; God, good, does not even know that anything inharmonious appears to have happened.

George Macdonald writes of the wind and the moon, to the effect that the blustering wind was greatly annoyed by the serenity of the moon, sailing in the sky so high above him. So the wind decided to blow the moon out of existence. But the louder the wind blew, the larger grew the moon, still and undisturbed. And the closing lines of the little poem run,

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