Article December 6, 1930 Issue

Bear No False Witness!

LAUNCELOT CECIL STUDDERT KENNEDY

Christian Science throws a wonderful light upon the Bible, including the Ten Commandments, that fundamental statement of moral law. Many have regarded the Commandments as only partially applicable to human affairs and the relationships between men. They have broadly admitted their value and, indeed, have gone so far as to make them the basis of sound civil law, but it remained for Mrs. Eddy to reveal to the world that each and all of the Ten Commandments have a very definite place with regard to daily thinking, the mental attitude of everyone.

To illustrate this point we have but to turn to any one of the Commandments. For instance, take the words of the ninth: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." This command has no limited application. In the light of Christian Science we recognize the depth of its meaning; and we are arrested and greatly helped by seeing its application to every phase of human experience.

We may have thought we were not likely to perjure ourselves in open court. We have not been in the habit of slandering our neighbor, of circulating false and unkind reports about him; for we have not been particularly concerned about him. This may have seemed a plausible position, a respectable and commendable one. Christian Science, however, compels us to see this command in a new light, leading us to consider it not less in the light of what we say and do in connection with our fellow man, but much more in the light of what we are thinking about him. When we realize that it is impossible actually to know that which is false, since a falsity is merely an erroneous belief, we can see that this command is a call to a meticulous exactness or rightness of thought about our fellow man. The statement that five times two makes eleven is false, and it can in no way disturb, confuse, or interest anyone who is knowing the one and only thing that can be known about that numerical relation, namely, that twice five makes ten, nothing more, nothing less.

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