Editorial January 2, 1926 Issue

"Line upon line"

Ella W. Hoag

"For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little." Most Christian Scientists are thoroughly familiar with these words of Isaiah. Indeed, they have quoted them many times during many years with admonitory emphasis; still their instructive nature is not yet fully comprehended. The necessity of adhering patiently to the truth until all error is first uncovered, then rebuked, and finally destroyed—proved unreal—seems a lesson still to be fully learned.

One of the characteristics of so-called mortal mind is inherent laziness. Its main purpose and desire being to secure ease, it soon puts up the pretense of weariness as an excuse for not continuing right endeavors. It also argues for procrastination, saying that to-morrow will be quite as good a time as to-day for persevering in the work which even it knows must sometime be done. It is ever ensnaring mankind into indolence and idleness, qualities which never bring about anything but inaction. Abhoring every indication of patient, steadfast, reiterant desire to use the truth in the right effort to overcome evil, it puts its victims to sleep both mentally and otherwise.

In the account of the Annual Meeting of The Mother Church for 1906 (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, pp. 48, 49), the Clerk, Mr. William B. Johnson, stated that "with the reading of her textbook, 'Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,' Mrs. Eddy insisted that her students make, every day, a prayerful study of the Bible, and obtain the spiritual understanding of its promises. Upon this she founded the future growth of her church." Then he quotes the following "appreciation of her efforts" given by Frederick Lawrence Knowles: "Mrs. Eddy ... in her insistence upon the constant daily reading of the Bible and her own writings, ... has given to her disciples a means of spiritual development which ... will certainly build such truth as they do gain into the marrow of their characters. The scorn of the gross and sensual, and the subordination of merely material to spiritual values, together with the discouragement of care and worry, are all forces that make for righteousness. And they are burned indelibly upon the mind of the neophyte every day through its reading. ... The religious body which can direct, and control, in no arbitrary sense, but through sane counsel, the reading of its membership, stands a great chance of sweeping the world within a generation."

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