Article November 12, 1979 Issue

Purity inside: cleanness outside

BARBARA JUERGENS FOX

Cleaning up its environment may cost the United States more than six hundred forty-five billion dollars within the next decade. At least as much will be spent on personal hygiene, laundry, and housecleaning. It would seem that never in human history have we been so dirty or spent so much to get clean!

Few of us would argue against cleanliness, preferring rather to echo the well-known maxim that cleanliness is next to godliness. In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy approvingly quotes this statement in a paragraph primarily concerned with infant care and adds, "I insist on bodily cleanliness within and without."^{Science and Health, p. 413;}

This high standard should be ours. But are personal and environmental cleanliness, while indispensable, sufficient of themselves? Christ Jesus warned: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.... Ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness." ^{Matt. 23:25,27;}

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