Article December 28, 1929 Issue

Naturalness of Good

LONGLEY TAYLOR

How sweet, how cheering, are the words of Christ Jesus, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them"! Why do we not accept him at his word and turn unreservedly for our instruction to the gentle teacher of God's love for man? May it not be that we are still looking to the human Jesus rather than to the Christ, Truth, which the Master manifested? Is it not this belief in personality which hides the spiritual and practical import of these blessed words?

Speaking to each one of his followers, Christ Jesus says: "Ye are the salt of the earth. ... Ye are the light of the world." Each one must lift up the light of spiritual understanding, in order that mankind may be enabled to escape from the bondage of sin, sickness, and death through an acceptance of Life, Truth, and Love as revealed in Christian Science. Greater by far is it to be a genuine Christian Scientist than to be the mightiest potentate in the material world. To be a Christian Scientist, to live the truth in thought and deed, is to bless one's self and all mankind. On page 201 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy writes, "The best sermon ever preached is Truth practised and demonstrated by the destruction of sin, sickness, and death."

What is the salt spoken of by Jesus? What is the light? And how may we be said to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world? Salt is, surely, symbolic of that quality of thought which preserves the truth, stands by it, and through it refuses, under all circumstances, to give credence to evil suggestions. The light is that spiritual illumination through the Christ, Truth, which displaces the darkness or ignorance of mortal mind. We are the salt of the earth, we are the light of the world, only in so far as we love and live the truth. What seems to keep us from this divine state of thought? Not persons; not material conditions; not tradition or hatred; not age or decay; nothing but the suggestion, the false belief, that these illusions are where, in reality, only God exists. We are learning in Christian Science never to attach evil to person, place, or condition, but to deal with it as a negation, as an illusion of material sense which is destroyed by the dawning of Truth on the awakened consciousness. It is then that we see evil for what it is, not for what it falsely claims to be.

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