"Ye shall be clean."

John B. Willis

One of the distinctive features of the Temple service as ordained by Moses, was its requirements with respect to personal and ceremonial cleanliness, and the more one meditates upon the symbolic and suggestive meanings of these requirements the more significant they are seen to be. Their inclusiveness is indicated by Jesus' words when he said, "He that is washed ... is clean every whit," and further by his scathing condemnation of those who, while painstakingly scrupulous as to externalities,—"the cup and platter,"—were indifferent as to the inner life,—the thought and motive.

His teaching that purity must characterize every aspect of the Spirit-impelled life, the within and the without, the impulse and its expression, the thought and its statement, was clearly apprehended by Paul, when, after giving the most glowing picture of our possible spiritual achievements, he exhorts that we "cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God."

The recognition of the unseemliness of material disorder—dirt—grows in human sense with the advance from a crude to a cultured civilization, and a people's rank is, therefore, accurately determined by their interest in sanitation. Paul's injunction, however, takes note of both "flesh and spirit,"—person and mentality. It lays emphasis upon the comprehensiveness of the purity of the Christ-ideal, over against the old Phariseeism, still extant, which takes the utmost care to keep itself from pollution without, while constantly indulging defilements within.

How often have we begun the day with a bath, and having made all our appointments clean and wholesome, proceeded to open our inner courts to the tidal sewage of the world's abnormity until its contaminating debris has been deposited in every fair cloister of thought,—yes, at its very altars! Surely, if consciousness is to become limpid to its depths, if we would be "clean every whit," then these corrupting streams must be excluded. He who lends a willing ear to sensuous suggestion and calumny, or to the daily description of the world's sicknesses, catastrophes, and crimes, is exposing his treasures to thieves and robbers. He is deliberately consenting to mental taint and moral despoliation, and here, as always, the highest considerations of self-interest re-enforce the call to a spiritual life.

Beyond this, the Christ-ideal demands that we shall not only resist the approach of evil, but that we shall always reflect the orderliness, congruity, and harmony of truth. Said Jesus, "That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man," and we readily see that the expression of error must witness to fellowship, if not identity, with error; and that the habit tends to fix and intensify the thought condition which prompted the error's rehearsal. Cleanliness means conformity to law. It blossoms in scientific exactness, lucidity, and refinement of thought. Clearness, chasteness, and beauty of expression is the only fitting channel for right ideas, and not only impurity, but crudity and indefiniteness of statement should be classed as an offence from which we are to escape at whatever cost of prayer and patient endeavor. We do well to remember the old adage, "Nothing is more trying than dirt"—the dirt of confusion. That gossipy "inability to quit," which strings a lot of inarticulate ideas upon the single thread of chance association, never convinces, but often offends and repels: while "the conscience" of those who yield to this temptation, "being weak, is defiled." How pointedly Jesus rebukes the habit in his words, "Let your communication be Yea, yea; Nay, nay; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil."

Veritable facts, when placed out of their proper relation and balance, are sometimes misleading, and who can estimate the extent of the misapprehension of truth, the seriousness of the disadvantage to every worthy cause which has resulted from the undiscriminating or otherwise inadequate speech of its representatives? "I will sprinkle you with clean water, and ye shall be clean," is the promise, and its fulfilment includes both the knowing of truth and its intelligible and winsome expression. There is no dirt—nothing out of place or out of keeping—in the domain of law. All things are subject to the Christ-idea, and if the Discoverer of Christian Science had spoken no other word, her impelling call for the manifestation of a more comprehensive and consistent Christian cleanliness in thought, word, and habit, would have made us all her debtors.

The divine order and ordering is "clean." In it alone is found strength, unity, authority, dominion, harmony, peace,—for it is in obedience to right. The teaching of Christian Science fundamentally establishes this order in thought, by discriminating between the real and the unreal, the actual and the seeming. All untruth, unreality, error is chaos, confusion, dirt, to be cast out, trodden under foot of men. All materiality of concept, and all unspirituality of life is to be put away, until the sense of self and the universe is wholly "clean;" then man appears, unsullied and uncorruptible as a summer sky, for the image of God is "like the substance of heaven in clearness." John B. Willis.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit