Article February 15, 1930 Issue

Testimony Highly Important

JEAN SAUNDERS SCOTT

Christian Scientists are all familiar with the record of Christ Jesus' silence before Pontius Pilate. And most of us can recall some occasion in our own experience when, upon voicing error, we were rebuked by the silence of some alert Christian Scientist to whom we were speaking. If one is grateful for correction, there is no more potent rebuke than this truth-filled silence before error. But there is one circumstance under which one cannot rightly be silent before error, and that is when error itself would take the form of silence, as it may sometimes do in Christian Science testimony meetings.

When we analyze the seeming cause of this silence, we find that it is supposedly due to a sense of mental limitation which has apparently rendered individuals unable, for the time being, to express their gratitude for benefits received. It is, however, our great privilege in this respect, as in all others, to follow the example of our Way-shower, who dealt quickly and effectively with error of this description; for it is recorded in the Gospel of Luke that "he was casting out a devil, and it was dumb." When silence indicates some belief in evil, we too must cast it out. If we do not destroy this error when it manifests a sense of mental limitation, how can we hope to destroy a so-called physical disability?

In striving to overcome any seeming difficulty in giving testimony, one finds a very helpful passage on page 454 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," where Mrs. Eddy says, "Right motives give pinions to thought, and strength and freedom to speech and action." Right motives! Does not this require of us testimony given in a spirit of praise to God, unadulterated by anxiety as to how we shall acquit ourselves? Does it not require of us a willingness to lay on the altar our false sense of self, and to "give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name," content that He who knows all things will judge our offerings according to the thoughts and intents of the heart? The widow who with an outpouring of love cast her two mites into the treasury "cast in more than they all." She was judged by the Master after this manner, and there is no other true judgment.

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