"DOTH NOT WISDOM CRY?"

John B. Willis

The average child needs to learn that the careless use of a match may involve the burning of a city; that it is foolish to run a great risk for a little fun, and that those who do not heed wisdom's call, are likely to get their lesson through suffering.

The American people have recently had a good opportunity to note that this need pertains also to adults, that the alert and thoughtful, respecting the most important matters even, are evidently few. We all know that to consent to the indulgence of the bestial impulses of the prize-ring is criminally unwise; that it excites the basest passions, and involves a hazard of possible ills such as no one can estimate. And yet the nation as a whole was utterly indifferent to these things until a bloody encounter had taken place, and the details of the degrading spectacle were rehearsed in the columns of well-nigh every daily paper in the country! Could anything be more discreditable to a professedly Christian people, or give more convincing evidence that we were specifically addressed by the apostle when he cried, "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead!"

Having thus permitted the foul seed to be sown broadcast in human thought, having listlessly stood by while the torch was applied to the tinder of sensual impulse, we now wake up to the iniquity of the whole proceeding, the utter stupidity of the indifference which permitted these pugilists and their promoters to win a fortune regardless of the injury inflicted on the highest interests of the nation, and to impose the burden of a thousand times the amount of their own gains, perchance, upon the taxpayers of the country in repressing the resulting lawlessness and criminality! Manifestly we all need to learn again that it is folly—yes, a sin—to play with fire.

While abating not one whit of the effort to relieve the human suffering which past mistakes have imposed, wisdom certainly counsels the placing of yet greater emphasis upon the prevention of these ills, and this is the distinctive word and ministry of Christian Science. However beneficent and praiseworthy remedial undertakings may be, at their best they can only lessen somewhat the hurtful harvestings of error. Genuine betterment begins when we cease sinning at seedtime, when we forestall the growth and garnerings of evil by denying it a beginning.

Verily, wisdom doth cry aloud in the streets today, "O foolish people, and without understanding"! and those who "hear in their hearts" will become more alert to that mesmerism of material sense which would shape our course in every activity, determination, and circumstance. No one who is ready to respond to wisdom's call can fail to see the significance of the insistent teaching of Christian Science that the false beliefs which supply the soil and sow the seed of all our suffering and sorrow, must be given up. This is the continuous and heroic concern of Christian Science, and this is its unmeasured value to men.

In recognizing the asserted right and rule of materiality, its claims of legitimacy and law, Christian endeavor has for the most part centered its activities upon the remedying of effects rather than the removal of cause, and it is here that the philosophy as well as the program of Christian Science presents one of its more salient contrasts to the generally accepted Christian plan and procedure for human betterment. Belief in materiality as a part of the divine order has practically interdicted the recognition of the seeds of sin, and hence in a thousand ways the folly so strikingly illustrated of late, runs its course in the conduct of men. In their ignorance of error the best-minded people are continually playing with fire, and though we be somewhat awakened, in so far as any one of us is consenting to the dominion of material impulse or desire, in so far as we even open our thought to the descriptions of evil-doing as they are placarded by camera or pen, in so far are we indulging in the same folly and courting the penalty which it merits.

John B. Willis.

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