Article December 19, 1936 Issue

The True Standard

ELMER F. BACKER

Factories manufacturing fine machinery have very precise gauge or standards, designed exclusively for purposes of reference and calibration. Other gauges, based upon these accurate standards and regularly used by the workmen who are engaged in actual manufacturing, become inaccurate through frequent use. Consequently, comparisons must be made from time to time with the standards and the required corrections carried out. Suppose that careless workmen compared worn gauges and then made incorrect changes. What would be the result? Because reference was not made to the true standard of measurement, confusion and trouble inevitably would follow such a wrong procedure.

In spiritual things, how vitally important it is for one to have always before him the true standard, namely, obedience to the First Commandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me"! Any deviation from that standard results in inharmony, which can be corrected only as one turns away from the false to the true.

Christ Jesus consistently lived in accordance with his teaching of loving God supremely and one's neighbor as oneself. He also recognized clearly that the Christ, which he manifested, is eternally at one with the Father-Mother, is inseparable from Him. And he was instant in defending himself from any false sense of being good apart from God, that is, possessing personal goodness. For instance, he asked a ruler, "Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God." Mrs. Eddy likewise turns the attention of all students of Christian Science away from the consideration of personality to the Christ, Truth, in her admonition, "Follow your Leader only so far as she follows Christ" (Message to The Mother Church for 1901, p. 34).

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