Editorial October 25, 1941 Issue

Wisdom and Love

George Shaw Cook

"Wisdom ," so the proverb reads, "is the principal thing," and this statement would seem to be confirmed by the experience of those who have undertaken to live and to demonstrate Christian Science. Many questions present themselves to Christian Science practitioners and teachers which can rightly be answered by them only through exercising the utmost wisdom. And the wisdom needed in correctly answering questions propounded by patients, students, and others is not worldly wisdom. The Apostle Paul in his first epistle to the Corinthians wrote, "My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God."

The wisdom needed in helping others and in solving problems pertaining to one's own affairs is the kind of wisdom which emanates from divine Mind and is inseparable from that Mind. It is the wisdom to which James referred when he said, "The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy." Such wisdom is unerring. It does not fluctuate or vary, and it does not fail. Guided by this sort of wisdom one may be sure that he will take the human footsteps which are nearest right for him to take in any and every instance.

Wisdom is an attribute of God, is in fact a primal quality, as is intelligence, but it is not a synonym for Deity. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy states (p. 2), "God is not moved by the breath of praise to do more than He has already done, nor can the infinite do less than bestow all good, since He is unchanging wisdom and Love." Inasmuch as Mrs. Eddy capitalizes the words which she employs as synonyms for God, it is evident that wisdom, as used in the foregoing statement, is not to be regarded as a synonym for Deity.

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