Editorial June 28, 1930 Issue

Promptness

Violet Ker Seymer

Every hour of every day is precious to the Christian Scientist, for to him it presents an opportunity for demonstration of one kind or another. On page 17 of her Message to The Mother Church for 1902, our Leader admonishes us to "square accounts with each passing hour." Among other things, this may mean that we should forbid apathy, resentment, infidelity to Truth, or any other discord to intrude into our consciousness, and should rebuke and resist it promptly. Moral laxity, half-hearted effort, procrastination, dubiousness, are the mental decline down which mortal thought rolls as easily as a ball down a hill. But true gravitation is spiritual. Promptness in denouncing error and announcing Truth is the direct road to victory, and all may follow it.

A ball slowly starting to roll down an incline can be easily stopped before it has had time to gain impetus; but if unchecked at the start, its momentum increases and the swift descent entails a toilsome ascent before it can be brought to the top again. So at the first hint of feeling annoyed, jealous, tempted by the pleasures or pains of sense, the Christian Scientist is pledged to repudiate these suggestions of the adversary and forbid them entrance to the sanctity of his consciousness, lest they develop in him and claim to become unmanageable. Jesus said, "Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him." And Mrs. Eddy interprets an adversary as "one who opposes, denies, disputes, not one who constructs and sustains reality and Truth" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 580). If not immediately rebuked and dismissed from thought, an error of belief or a discordant sense-impression is apt to become mentally pigeon-holed and to remain there, a subtle deterrent of which we are scarcely conscious. Hence Jesus urged dealing with the enemy "whiles thou art in the way with him," that is, the moment error comes to our thought.

Every second of what mortals call time belongs to eternity, and as we promptly claim for God and His harmonious manifestation that very moment which error would appropriate for its own discordant self-expression, this same moment will be to us one of vision and victory, and not of delusion and defeat.

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