Article February 2, 1924 Issue

The Challenge

BLANCHE E. POTTER

MRS. EDDY says in her Message to The Mother Church for 1900 (p. 9), "The twentieth century in the ebb and flow of thought will challenge the thinkers, speakers, and workers to do their best." Have we who love to call ourselves Christian Scientists fully accepted this challenge to the age in which we live? Are not many of us putting off our best work until some future time? If so, we must awake, and think, speak, and work our best at the present moment of understanding; for we have no other time; and unless we do so, we are not fulfilling our duty to this age.

Every Christian Scientist has had some experience in receiving the seeds of truth; and the necessity it to sow them. There are three ways of extending God's kingdom on earth,—through the written, the spoken, and the mental word. These are ways through which Love reaches human consciousness. Hence the great necessity of keeping them free from every belief of so-called mortal mind, in order that the warmth and light of divine Love may freely reach the hungry heart to-day. What if those before us who caught a glimpse of the truth of being had neglected to record it in their thinking, speaking, or works? We should have no Bible today. And yet, perhaps, they may have heard the same mental argument of fear, which we hear so often today: Some one else can do it better than I. Their love for mankind overcame the error; and so each did the best he could. It was, likewise, Mrs. Eddy's unselfed love for mankind which enabled her to do her great work, which is bringing in such a rich harvest.

Most of us are familiar with another argument of mortal mind which comes to prevent our present doing of our best. It may be termed mental laziness. It comes to us dressed in the guise of reason, and says: Wait until you can do better. That always sounds rather sensible; for we think we shall do better in the near future, when we have attained to fuller understanding. So, forgetting the law of Love which says, "Ceasing to give, we cease to have," we may obey this suggestion, only to wake, sooner or later, with a great sense of disappointment that the good which was hoped to be done in the near future still remains undone, and is seemingly no nearer accomplishment. This sense of disappointment is a good sign, however, for it is due to the suffering which results from the sign of omission, of using our present understanding of good; and it tends to turn the one suffering therefrom to the divine Mind for a remedy.

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