Article April 11, 1931 Issue

The Perfect Pattern

F. ADELINE ARMSTRONG

The story is told of a builder's apprentice who was given a rafter and told to make twelve others exactly like it. He laid the pattern rafter on the material and cut one; but instead of cutting all of them by the pattern, he cut the second by the first, and the third by the second, and so on until he had cut the twelve. When the master builder came to use the rafters he found only one that he could use—the first one cut; the others did not fit.

According to a dictionary, one definition of "pattern" is "an ideal, a standard." The reason why eleven of the rafters could not be used was that they deviated from the exact standard of measurement. This may contain a lesson for us as Christian Scientists.

One of the characteristics of the human so-called mind is a tendency to acclaim and follow a standard based on human excellence and achievement. We are hero worshipers. Men who have blazed new trails and reached new heights in any endeavor we hold up to ourselves as models, trying to emulate their actions without sharing in the motives that actuated them. The lives of the men who are earth's pioneers and reformers are, and should be, an inspiration to everyone who is trying to map out a path for himself; but what we are liable to forget is that the reason they achieved eminence was that they followed a true ideal.

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