Editorial January 11, 1941 Issue

"The rule of Life"

Evelyn F. Heywood

The mathematician in order to achieve exactness does not merely contemplate arithmetical rules or vaguely anticipate the acceptance of them in some future Utopian state. He adopts and practices them in every calculation that he makes. They thus become inherent in his thought, so that the least infraction of them is quickly discerned and corrected. He has no fear that these rules will be operative in one instance and not in another; will be valid today but possibly prove no certain guide to him tomorrow. He knows them to be undeviating, wholly reliable, and all that is required of him is intelligently and faithfully to observe and practice them.

On page 118 of "Miscellaneous Writings," Mary Baker Eddy writes, "To obey the principle of mathematics ninety-nine times in one hundred and then allow one numeral to make incorrect your entire problem, is neither Science nor obedience." So it is with the rule of Life. Christ Jesus did not see the rule of Life operating capriciously, spasmodically, in a world over which he had no jurisdiction. He knew that man is the representative, the embodiment, of Life. In everything he said and did, he identified himself with Life, never with death. In this way did he express eternality, the continuous consciousness of man's dominion over mortality.

"If a man keep my saying," he declared, "he shall never see death." And the keeping of his saying in consecrated fidelity, in unwavering obedience, is no less imperative to the solution of this "entire problem" than is the correctness of each numeral in the principle of mathematics. In commenting on this statement of Jesus, Mrs. Eddy writes (Unity of Good, p. 40), "Jesus declares that they who believe his sayings will never die: therefore mortals can no more receive everlasting life by believing in death, than they can become perfect by believing in imperfection and living imperfectly."

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