Article February 4, 1939 Issue

Home Relations

FRANCES H. FENN

The wish for happy human relationships and desirable habitations has ever been uppermost in the thought of humanity. The prophet Isaiah, foreseeing the coming of the Christ, declared that the people should "dwell in a peaceable habitation, and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting places." When Jacob's consciousness was uplifted to a more spiritual sense of existence, and fear and loneliness were overcome, he realized the omnipresence of God, and though he had no roof over his head, and only stones for a pillow, yet he was able to say with conviction, "This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven."

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, offers this practical, divinely inspired counsel on page 287 of "Miscellaneous Writings": "Be faithful over home relations; they lead to higher joys: obey the Golden Rule for human life, and it will spare you much bitterness." What are these "home relations" to which we must be faithful? Does this admonition merely mean that two or more individuals who dwell in the same house, under the same roof, should maintain, perhaps, an outward semblance of felicity?

Obviously, much more than this is required. To be "faithful over home relations" includes harmonious living and the ability to live peaceably with others. It is to obey the spirit and the letter of the Ten Commandments and Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, as well as to observe the amenities of gracious living. We must faithfully conform to the divine law of Love which demands that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us, in the performance of our human obligations, if we would have the right to claim as our own the "higher joys" of conscious oneness with our Father-Mother God. If we would be free to exercise the right of true self-government, by recognizing the spiritual government of divine Principle, then we must accord, in thought and deed, the same privilege to our brother.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

"Our sufficiency is of God"