Article July 8, 1944 Issue

Courtesy Is Godlike

[Of Special Interest to Youth]

ARTHUR J. TODD

Courtesy , good manners, spring from love, from kindness, and are therefore natural to the individual who is proving man's God-bestowed nature, and essential for living with others. They are thus more than "minor morals"; they are primary virtues, whether expressed as politeness, hospitality, chivalry, or gentle consideration for others. A gracious American, Emerson, once set down both the why and the how of manners when he called them "the happy ways of doing things."

Christian Science offers no encouragement to the so-called "cult of sloppiness" in speech, dress, or manners. It teaches that since man is the child of God, man is inherently refined, and that the Golden Rule includes courtesy as well as honesty. A great Christian saint, born of a noble family and taught the fundamentals of good manners, once quoted a verse from the Sermon on the Mount, "Your Father which is in heaven... maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust," then added the beautiful touch— 'through courtesy." Courtesy, he saw as a mark of divinity. And Mary Baker Eddy in an expression of gratitude to her native state spoke in similar phrase: "I have one innate joy, and love to breathe it to the breeze as God's courtesy" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 341).

Take your Bibles and study the Gospel record of Jesus: from boyhood to the very end of his earthly career you will find him everywhere and always the courteous gentleman. Observe that when at the age often regarded as the age of adolescence, he, according to Luke's record, "increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man." Right conduct and good manners are implied in that brief character sketch. See how tenderly he asked that food be given to Jairus' little daughter, whom he had raised from death. Gently he treated the woman whom he healed of a twelve-year physical disorder. "Daughter," he called her, to put her at ease. How reassuring he must have sounded to the erstwhile sinner when he not only healed him of "palsy," but called him "son," instead of berating him for a wasted life. Quick he was to sense the need of Peter's mother-in-law for healing, and quickly she reciprocated. Instantly he responded to the centurion's appeal for the healing of his servant.

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