Editorial April 3, 1943 Issue

The Impulsion of a Good Example

Peter V. Ross

Every individual is under daily observation as he moves about among his fellows. Even the little things he does are scrutinized and his casual remarks weighed. Constantly do people take his measure. They do more; they fashion their conduct after his pattern to an extent they little suspect. His acts bring judgment upon himself, of course, but with equal certainty they provide models more persuasive to others than studied arguments.

Christ Jesus never wrote so much as a letter, to our knowledge. He went about doing good, and this for a short time only and in a relatively small area. But his influence in the western world surpasses that of any other teacher. "Lives there a man who can better define ethics, better elucidate the Principle of being, than he who 'spake as never man spake,' and whose precepts and example have a perpetual freshness in relation to human events?" asks Mary Baker Eddy on page 269 of her "Miscellaneous Writings."

Goodness unobtrusively lived is a silent force so irresistible that no one coming within its radius can fail to be affected. "No man or woman of the humblest sort," says Phillips Brooks, "can really be strong, gentle, pure, and good, without the world being the better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness."

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