Article December 18, 1926 Issue

Steadfastness

ISABEL A. RUSSUM

The human mind is prone to alternate between the two extremes of feverish activity and slothful inertia. There are none who, unless impelled and controlled by the divine Mind, will steadily and consistently pursue a course having as its goal some great achievement of good, either for the human race or for their own individual gain. The varied interests of human living, its pleasures and sorrows, all tend to distract men from their purpose, and so to militate against their success.

In Christian Science we are brought face to face with the fact that our striving after good must be continuous. We are not told that there will be no backward steps, no seeming failures at times; but we are shown very clearly how to rise above these and make of them stepping-stones to higher ground. In Isaiah we read, "When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him." Have we not all experienced this coming in of the enemy like a flood? And do we not find that it has almost always happened when we have been off guard; when we have not been watching and praying as we ought?

How easy it is, when all is apparently well with us, to rest on our oars and drift with the tide! Mortal mind has a thousand subtle temptations with which to lure us from the path of right thinking and right acting. It may suggest that just now there is not the need for such strenuous effort; that all seems well with us, with our home and our church, so that surely social duties or pleasures are entitled to a little more attention, to a little more of our time and thought. It may even argue that we need some relaxation from the unceasing effort to tread the narrow way of righteousness!

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