Editorial August 27, 1949 Issue

FULL COMPENSATION

Helen Wood Bauman

To human sense, justice may seem scant and mercy wanting, but Christian Science reveals divine justice as transcending human inequities and meting out full and merciful recompense to all.

Perhaps this is the lesson Christ Jesus intended we should gather from his parable of the eleventh hour (Matt. 20:1-19), one of his profound parables which concern the kingdom of heaven and our gaining of it. In it he described a householder who hired laborers in the early hours of the morning to work in his vineyard. Later, at the third hour, the sixth, and the ninth, he hired others and promised all whatever pay was right. Finally, at the eleventh hour, he again hired men, giving the same promise. But when they were paid, all received the same recompense. When those who had labored long murmured, the householder said, "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?"

Various interpretations have been given this parable by famous religionists, one being that it is designed to encourage those who have entered God's service late in life to work diligently; another, that it is a warning not to be too confident that we are making a good start in Christian progress. To the Christian Scientist it may point to the comforting fact that the consciousness of absolute spiritual reality awaits everyone, whatever his advantages or disadvantages regarding spiritual progress may appear to be. The human problems which heredity, education, and environment seem to produce may make the task of proving God's allness and man's spiritual perfection, which Christian Science reveals, unequal and often unjust; but infinite Love encompasses all life, and the penetrating influence of its just and merciful nature enfolds the issues of full salvation from the mortal sense of life.

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