Editorial April 29, 1939 Issue

The Divine Demand

Evelyn F. Heywood

The belief that God required material sacrifices of His people—how persistently through the ages has this misconception hidden from them what alone it is that God does require of men! With the clarity of spiritual vision, the prophet Micah saw and declared it; but as so many others had done before, and were to do after him, he spoke to those who understood him not. "And what doth the Lord require of thee," asked Micah, "but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" In these words did he utterly dismiss the value of any material sacrifice, whatever its extent and nature, appealing to men to seek the qualities of Spirit alone in their worship of God.

Justice, mercy, humility, these are revealed as the sole requirements; in these qualities, whereby each may express that which alone is recognized of God, is seen the manifestation of the divine nature.

Men have made great demands upon themselves and upon each other, even to the sacrifice of everything that they hold most dear, sometimes in a mistaken sense that this was the divine decree, sometimes because of their own false sense of duty. But such demands, unless actuated by justice and mercy, were always immeasurably remote from the wisdom and love which express God. "Truth, Life, and Love are the only legitimate and eternal demands on man, and they are spiritual lawgivers, enforcing obedience through divine statutes," we read on page 184 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. These are the only demands which all men must heed, not as the result of sacrificing something that is rightly dear to them, but because only in the laying aside of what is in opposition to true being, do they enter into the boundless wealth and beauty of spiritual selfhood.

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