Article November 19, 1927 Issue

Divine Service

GEORGENE L. MILLER

A WELL-KNOWN satistician has said, "When fifty-one per cent of the people are headed toward the star of service and are trying to pull the cart, we have prosperity; when they are headed toward the star of selfishness and are trying to ride in the cart, we have depression." It is certainly cause for gratification that so many public men to-day, especially in their talks on business, are urging the idea of service, some of them even going so far as to urge it in terms of the Golden Rule.

The materialist, however, is apt not only to present a limited view of service, but also to forget or ignore the higher idea of reward, letting it be interpreted in terms of money, wages, dividends, profits—all of them material concepts. How could it be otherwise, when he bases his arguments on a belief of intelligent matter? As a result, the so-called human mind's view of service and reward is a very selfish one. It announces that it will do so much work for so much pay, but that it will charge a big price for a piece of work to-day, because the work will be worth nothing to-morrow. It decrees that some work must be paid for, and other work done for nothing; it elects to do what it likes, and to let what it dislikes go undone; or it refuses to work at all, unless someone is at hand to direct each move. Thus the so-called human mind makes its own conditions, and deceives itself into believing that its vagaries on the subject of service and reward are governed by a law of material demand and supply. Is it any wonder that arguments based on such mutable premises are not productive of a speedier approach to the standard of the Golden Rule?

The student of Christian Science has cause to be grateful that this concept of service and its reward is not the true concept; that the human mind's dictum is not law. Webster defines service as "the performance of labor for the benefit of another;" and our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, on page 195 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," urges us to "do good to all because we love all, and to use in God's service the one talent that we all have." What a beautiful work it would be if we were all using our ability in God's service—each about his Father's business! No competition, no unemployment, no selfishness! The motto, "All for one, and one for all," and that "one" God, would be most appropriate. With this as our star of service, could selfishness claim its toll? In fact, work done unselfishly is lifted into the high plane of spontaneity, which has been defined as a "willingness to let God declare Himself in His idea." Work done with this willingness becomes joyous, free, and expresses that selflessness to which Mrs. Eddy refers on page 185 of "Miscellaneous Writings," where she says, "Self-renunciation of all that constitutes a so-called material man, and the acknowledgment and achievement of his spiritual identity as the child of God, is Science that opens the very flood-gates of heaven; whence good flows into every avenue of being, cleansing mortals of all uncleanness, destroying all suffering, and demonstrating the true image and likeness."

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