Article January 3, 1953 Issue

RETAIN THINE INTEGRITY

LESLIE C. BELL

When Job was afflicted with physical sickness, when he had lost all his material possessions and every evil influence seemed to besiege him, his wife, giving him the counsel of defeat, asked him (2:9), "Dost thou still retain thine integrity?" Yet not the greatest calamity could alter Job's righteousness. Throughout his experiences he retained his integrity, so that eventually his further spiritualized thought was manifest in greater prosperity and happiness than before.

Whether we still retain our integrity in the midst of a violently chemicalizing world is a question we may well ask ourselves today. Corrupt conditions are a world problem, not a local one, for Truth is universally bringing erroneous thinking to the surface for destruction. This chemicalization is apparent in a general lowering of the standard of honesty, so that honor and probity seem to be at a premium. The pressure of a disturbed economy weighing upon all our transactions would make us believe that normal existence is difficult if we do not indulge in a certain amount of duplicity; yet whatever the situation in which we find ourselves, our integrity is assured when we accept the basic teaching of Christian Science that the allness of God, Principle, means the nothingness and powerlessness of all that is unprincipled.

Most religions have accepted a perfect God as the creator of man, but Christian Science insists that a perfect creator can only be expressed in a perfect creation, which is incapable of imperfection. Christian Science does not attempt to reconcile an obviously imperfect creation with a perfect God and perfect creation, but shows that what is imperfect has no creator, has no real existence, and at most is but a false sensory illusion. Furthermore, the truth of this teaching is evidenced in the healings through Christian Science of both sin and sickness.

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