Order

[Written Especially for Young People]

HAZEL HARPER HARRIS BRANDNER

Alexander Pope, the great English poet, wrote, "Order is heaven's first law." Many thinkers have, no doubt, been impressed with the orderliness of nature, and of the stellar universe. The recurring seasons, the regularity of the moon's phases, the migration of birds in the spring and autumn, the tides, and the beauty of the stars, all hint the fact that creation rests upon a law of order.

Something of this may come to us when watching the traffic in the city streets. We realize that the expedition with which a great number of vehicles and pedestrains pass a given corner without confusion must be regulated by some law or rule. We may also note that any driver who is ignorant of or disobedient to this law hinders his own progress and interferes also with the progress of others.

If order is a prime factor in facilitating ordinary travel through city streets, may it not also be a necessity in helping us to traverse our various mental pathways through the maze of material beliefs to heaven's gate, the portal of harmony? Order does not mean stiff, set limitation, but a natural, fluent progress in line with good. Just as traffic makes most progress when moving in orderly fashion, so also do we progress best when God's law of order governs our activities.

Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science and author of the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," has much to say about order in her writings which may be profitably studied with the aid of Concordances. In commenting upon Pope's statement, she writes in "Retrospection and Introspection" (p. 87): "The poet's line, 'Order is heaven's first law,' is so eternally true, so axiomatic, that it has become a truism; and its wisdom is as obvious in religion and scholarship as in astronomy or mathematics." And in the next paragraph she says, "Genuine Christian Scientists are, or should be, the most systematic and law-abiding people on earth, because their religion demands implicit adherence to fixed rules, in the orderly demonstration thereof." This is in accord with Paul's advice to the Corinthians, "Let all things be done decently and in order."

Order is natural and pleasing to all; disorder is unnatural, and therefore indicates mental confusion. If one figure on a blackboard is out of line with others, does not our love of order immediately detect this and make us want to correct it? This should prove to us that our real self delights in order, that it is our native estate, and that discord is the result of disobedience to "heaven's first law" and is a hurried or confused sense which should be corrected.

Christian Science is doing much to establish orderly thinking among men, and this is being manifested in more orderly action. In Science and Health (p. 255) we read: "Eternal Truth is changing the universe." "'Let there be light,' is the perpetual demand of Truth and Love, changing chaos into order and discord into the music of the spheres." Would it not make us happy to feel that we are having our part in bringing order out of chaos and adding to the demonstration of the orderliness of God's universe?

This we may begin to do today by ordering our thoughts according to the teachings of Christian Science, and by keeping them in line with Love; by not lending one of our minutes to idleness or gossip, but keeping them all for intelligent and useful activities; by giving strict attention in Sunday school and church to the service, not allowing our thoughts to stray; by obedience to the laws of our country, the rules of our schools, and the niceties of social intercourse. Also by watching our speech not only that we may keep it loving in import and kindly in tone, but that no crudities may mar the beauty of its expression. A diligent and persistent ordering of our thinking in harmony with the truth will assuredly make itself manifest in orderly habits, more grace in conduct, more neatness, more system in the home and the managing of our affairs, better grades at school, more leisure time, better health, and happier hearts.

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