Editorial August 22, 1942 Issue

Magnitude

Evelyn F. Heywood

When men awaken to the magnitude of life, they find themselves one with all great ideals and purposes which proclaim universal salvation. Identifying themselves with all that intelligently and righteously labors for equality and freedom among men, they see their own lives in proportion to the whole. They grasp something of these words of Mary Baker Eddy on page 100 of "Miscellaneous Writings": "Love's labors are not lost. The five personal senses, that grasp neither the meaning nor the magnitude of self-abnegation, may lose sight thereof; but Science voices unselfish love, unfolds infinite good, leads on irresistible forces, and will finally show the fruits of Love." No one who has not been willing to forsake what has been called "the long littleness of life," the multitudinous selfishnesses and cowardices, the dishonesties and recriminations of mortal selfhood, has glimpsed in "the magnitude of self-abnegation" the boundless magnitude of man, who is the likeness of God.

Today in the world's universal and stupendous need, men are called upon to think and act not in littleness, but in the greatness of service; not in terms of mine but of ours; not in mere self-preservation and self-advantage, but in awareness of Jesus' assurance, "Whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it."

The magnitude of the task which all are called upon to perform, can hardly be ignored. Through the centuries great men and women have answered in sublime seld-abnegation to the call of their brethren for deliverance; but others, outlining the extent of their labors not in Love's measurement, but in the satisfying of their own needs or ambitions, have spelled littleness in ideal and accomplishment. Today in the spiritual chemicalization which Truth is producing, the thinker perceives inexorably the onward sweep of those irresistible forces to which Mrs. Eddy refers; he sees also as he lifts his eyes to behold the light that despite the furious, the ruthless resistance of evil, her prophecy is being fulfilled in Love's fruition.

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