Article January 5, 1946 Issue

A Clean Sweep

LOUIS DEAN SEARS, JR.

One of the suggestions sometimes accepted today by seekers after the truth is that they should be satisfied with partial victory and half-truths. Sometimes we hear it said of incomplete accomplishment. "It's better than nothing." To accept partial victory in our daily demonstrations of Christian Science is to be like an untidy housewife who is satisfied to sweep dirt under a rug. As loyal followers of the truth we cannot be content to work diligently for a period, and then, just short of a complete victory— a clean sweep—pause and push the subtle suggestions of error into the unseen places of mortal thought.

In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy has said of such suggestions (p. 102). "So secret are the present methods of animal magnetism that they ensnare the age into indolence, and produce the very apathy on the subject which the criminal desires." Any suggestion that tempts us to accept anything short of the perfection of the infinite God emanates from the "criminal."

Jesus' disciples were apparently accepting the suggestion of apathy when the Master found them in the garden of Gethsemane and asked, "Could ye not watch with me one hour?" Jesus then counseled (Matt. 26:40, 41), "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." It is easy to declare our desire for spiritual perfection, but quite another task to work diligently for its appearing, and to watch the last hour, when the temptation may be great to rest upon our labors and be content with a partial demonstration.

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"Apples of gold"
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