Article May 24, 1952 Issue

BEARING TRUE WITNESS

D. OLA GILLESPIE

A WITNESS in court takes an oath "to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." The student of Christian Science should be just as honest in bearing witness to God and His creation as one in court is, under oath, to tell the "whole truth."

A Christian Scientist who had unintentionally offended her next-door neighbor was very much disturbed because of the neighbor's attitude toward her and her house hold. One day while she was pondering the solution of the problem, the thought came to her that through her study of the Bible and the writings of Mary Baker Eddy she knew how to think rightly about the circumstance and thus she should and could be its master.

The words of the ninth commandment came to her like a flash of light (Ex. 20:16): "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." She saw that since, as the Scriptures aver, God made man in His image, she had no right to hold in thought an unreal image of her neighbor as a gossiping, willful, stubborn person; for this was not bearing true witness. She realized in Bible language (James 2:10), "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all." If she was claiming honesty, uprightness, and Godlikeness for herself, but not for her neighbor, she was bearing false witness; she was guilty of the whole law. She then began to replace the wrong thoughts with the truth that honesty, justice, mercy, love, kindness, and goodness are qualities which belong to all of God's children—to her neighbor as well as to herself. When she had thus cleared her thinking, the whole thing vanished from her mind, and she was at peace.

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