Editorial April 19, 1924 Issue

"Be thou faithful"

Ella W. Hoag

"Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life," was the word the angel told John to proclaim to all who had "ears to hear." Christians have always prayed that they might be among those who would finally win this desirable reward; but the most of them have believed it would only be awarded in a distant heaven at some unknown future day. At the same time they have wondered, however faithful they may have endeavored to be, if they could hope to be among those crowned. Although Jesus taught and proved that faithfulness "unto death" meant the final overcoming even of the "last enemy," not the yielding to it, Christians have still looked largely to the death of the body as the necessary preliminary to the measuring of their reward.

Christian Science, from its standpoint that the infinite God is divine Life and that this divine Life is divine Mind, reveals the fact that all there is to death must be the beliefs in a life and mind apart from God; these beliefs are what must be relinquished. As Paul said: "To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." Then every false, material thought which is conquered—proved unreal—by a divine, spiritual thought registers the death of that much error. Thus we see what Paul meant when he said, "I die daily;" he each day gave up some belief in a false selfhood.

As men awaken to the fact that they are conscious of life only as they think divine thoughts, they will recognize that it is their thinking they must learn to watch, and not their bodies. They will see that when they cling to a spiritual thought—a thought which belongs to God, who is both Life and Mind—with sufficient steadfastness to overcome its opposite supposititious mortal thought, they have entered just so much into real life, and a false belief has been destroyed; just so much of death has been put off, and just so much of life has been put on.

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