Humanity's Hunger

There's a big and blessed promise of humanity's redemption in the universal desire of honest men to get at the truth of things. Selfishness, the self-satisfaction of ignorance, and the prejudices of a narrowing education, always hamper and sometimes seemingly enslave the truth-loving instinct and quest, but it will not down, and in every age, as in every individual life, it ultimately claims its own and enters that protest against dogma and conventionalism which lights the torch of progress.

Every age of possible reform has been characterized by that disregard of tradition and of the opinion of others which marks the supremacy of the man, his emergence from the indifferent level of creedal loyalty. This superiority to the faith of the fathers, contains no element of disrespect for that faith, though often so charged. In all sincere men it is rather a conscious and purposeful endeavor to measure up to precisely the same standard of loyalty to conviction which has led all Christian reformers to break with the dominating thought of their times. Said a loyal Christian Scientist recently, "I was never so good a Wesleyan as I am now, and this for the reason that I was never so Wesley-like in my willingness to be misjudged and condemned by others, rather than be untrue to my highest spiritual concepts."

The assertion of this spirit of daring for truth's sake is very pronounced to-day, and while it can but shock and alarm those who identify spiritual truth with some human attempt at its statement, it is a sign of better things to all those who apprehend the place and necessity for error's uncovering in the order of our spiritual advance.

Under the heading, "What is Religion?" a writer recently expressed himself in terms whose searching frankness is fairly represented by the following excerpts. He says,—

"I was religiously brought up.... and till long after I was of age regarded the Bible as one consistent narrative, to be taken literally, with the exception of the parables in the New Testament. After I grew older and got out in the world and began to reason for myself I began to doubt, and now I am simply in a state of bewilderment. The first thing that shook my faith was that my prayers were not answered. I had always been taught at home and at church to believe in answer to prayer, and when I prayed for that which I knew then and know now to be good for me and got it not, no amount of Christian sophistry could convince me that I had been cruelly deceived....

"So also about the Bible; I came to feel that I had been deceived, for I had been taught Hebrew legends and allegories as true.... I have the highest respect for the Bible, and would like to read it if I could understand it.... I wish that some wise man would talk to me as he might to one who had spent his whole life in a lighthouse and had never had any religious instruction whatever. I want to hear about the fundamental, elementary principles of religion.... What is the Christian religion, reduced to its simplest expression?... Is there any proof of God or immortality other than the longing in our own souls?... I want to be treated with sincerity. I want to hear the simple truth, not 'as a little child,' but as to a grown man, who must reason as well as feel,—a man who has sinned and suffered and now fain would find a safe anchorage for his soul in this sea of doubt and trouble."

This brother has dared to lay vigorous hands upon the thorny hedges of belief, and he is likely to suffer somewhat before he has wholly passed their venerated pale; but his face is set toward Jerusalem, and while all who have escaped his present thrall would gladly aid him in his struggle toward the light, the true Christian Scientist alone is adequately fitted to render this service, and for the reason that he alone can speak unequivocally of that for which the well-meaning, and hungry hearted in all the world are seeking; viz., demonstrable truth. Such inquirers may be dismissed (as they often are) with the counsel that they be patient and trust all to the hands of a God whose "ways are past finding out," but their want is not thus satisfied, and their condemnation of both creeds and professed Christians is likely to be phrased in the words of the Master, "I was an hungered and ye gave me no meat."

Everywhere is heard this pitiful plaint of those who have a right to expect bread from the representatives of him who fed the multitude. The expressions of human sympathy and hope will do no more to satisfy this longing of a troubled heart than would the platitudes of perfunctory prayer. Men long for certitude, they ask not for theories about bread-making, but for bread, and the Christian Scientist who is demonstrating the present and practical availability of Christ-truth to heal sickness and sin has a privilege and opportunity to-day which exalts him above princes. If tempted ever to be content with a voluble acquaintance with the letter of Christian Science, let him listen to the cry which wells up from the heart of the world, and he will be driven to his knees by a sense of condemnation whose intensity is known only to those who have sinned against great light. Every true Christian Scientist must find an impelling inspiration in the fact that upon him is laid this exalted demand, that like the Master, he be able to point to his own works of healing and spiritual regeneration in confirmation of the truths for which he stands. Meeting this requirement, he becomes indeed a minister of Christ, a comfort and blessing to the suffering and the heartsick everywhere. W.

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Letters to our Leader

November 26, 1904

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