Editorial August 31, 1935 Issue

Reputation and Character

George Shaw Cook

It has been said, and truly, that a man's reputation is what others believe him to be, and his character what he actually is. Doubtless many persons have been reputed to be better than they actually were, and if conscientious, they may, at times, have been embarrassed by having desirable qualities attributed to them which they did not possess in a degree commensurate with their reputation.

On the other hand, the reverse of this has sometimes been so. The character of some individuals has been far better than their reputation. This was true in a marked degree of Jesus the Christ, as Mrs. Eddy points out in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," where she writes, on page 53: "The reputation of Jesus was the very opposite of his character. Why? Because the divine Principle and practice of Jesus were misunderstood. He was at work in divine Science. His words and works were unknown to the world because above and contrary to the world's religious sense." Jesus was said to be a "friend of publicans and sinners," and he was even charged with being a glutton and a winebibber, and yet, as Mrs. Eddy writes on this same page of our textbook, "there never lived a man so far removed from appetites and passions as the Nazarene."

During the centuries which have intervened since Jesus was so falsely accused, his true character has been more clearly seen and more generally admitted, so that today there would be few indeed who would not gladly acknowledge him to have been a man of unquestionable purity. Christians, without exception, recognize his immaculate goodness.

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