Article June 16, 1956 Issue

THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW WAY IS EXPANSIVE

[Of Special Interest to Young People]

MARTHA J. BUCKNER

Among the rules for a good life which Christ Jesus gave in his Sermon on the Mount is the following (Matt. 7:13, 14): "Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." When these verses appeared in a Lesson-Sermon from the Christian Science Quarterly, one Sunday School teacher commented, "The straight and narrow way expands; the broad way limits."

The class of young men and women looked at her somewhat questioningly. "Straight and narrow" were words which did not appeal to them. But as the discussion progressed they learned that truth is narrow in the sense of exact, unerring, and is absolute and straight in the sense of undeviating and precise. One does not object to mathematics on the ground that it is too strict and narrow. The multiplication table does not state that five times two may be ten, but rather that it is ten. Strict adherence to the rules of mathematics makes the solution of problems possible and corrects mistaken calculations. The very strictness and exactness of mathematics enable one to learn to solve the simplest problem as well as the most advanced.

Mary Baker Eddy discerned this fact, for in her Message to The Mother Church for 1901 she writes (p. 22): "I begin at the feet of Christ and with the numeration table of Christian Science. But I do not say that one added to one is three, or one and a half, nor say this to accommodate popular opinion as to the Science of Christianity. I adhere to my text, that one and one are two all the way up to the infinite calculus of the infinite God."

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