Conservative Radicalism

John B. Willis

Christ Jesus has been rightly named "a great radical," and it is equally true that he was a great conservative. He championed ideas which supplied a new concept of God, of man, and of life; a new basis for thought and action, so that the great majority of human opinions were instantly affected. Furthermore, he uncovered the materiality and inconsistency of much existing ecclesiasticism, and thus dated a new religious order. Nevertheless, no good thing in human belief was to be done away. He declared that he came simply to fulfil the law and prophets which they had assertedly believed. So too Peter and Stephen and Paul, in all their addresses to their countrymen, made respectful reference to the value of the history, the characters, and the ideals which their hearers professed to reverence. Even in addressing those who were heathen to the Jews, St. Paul on Mars Hill began his portrayal of the true God and true worship by commending those about him, in view of the fact that, as one translator renders the Greek, they were "greatly given to deity reverencing."

Christian Science thus stands for the conservation of all good. While radically intolerant of error, every phase and aspect of materiality, it recognizes, as St. John has said, that the light of Truth reaches in some degree "every man that cometh into the world," and that this light expressed in the instinct of worship, the spirit of brotherhood, the sense of the sacredness of life, the awe awakened by the sublimities of nature, or in love for the beautiful in nature or in art, is not to be annihilated, but to be cherished and added to.

This thought is found in the larger meaning of a phrase to which Mrs. Eddy has given prominence, "the unity of good," and it indicates the right attitude respecting the value of improved beliefs. If the illumination of human consciousness is and has ever been progressive, and if God is the only source of truth and goodness and beauty, then every flavor and element of bettering sense, every unselfish aspiration and ennobling endeavor, is of divine impulsion. The show of reverence for the conceived source of good, of kindliness and fairness, of right desire and nobility, which has been found among men of every race and stage of civilization,—all this is seen to mark the dawning light of the divine appearing, and a fairer estimate of ethical values is at once entertained. And who can measure the greater good to all if Christian workers in home and foreign lands had thus perceived and presented the gospel as the fulfilment, the completion of all the good which had already appeared in human thought and character? if they had gone into the highways and byways of the world to say, We have come to tell you of the larger blessings which have been conferred upon us, to bring to its blossoming every longing you have felt for better things?

When one thinks of the variety of religious beliefs in all the world, and of the devotion to them which witnesses in no small degree to sincere aspiration, to honest desire for an ideal brotherhood of honored right and universal well-being, his truer sense of love is sure to beat down dividing walls and to embrace the whole human family in the reflection of something of that divine compassion of which St. John has said, "God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved."

This is the teaching of Christ Jesus and of Christian Science: that good is universal and omnipotent; that something of it finds expression in every bettering belief, and that the salvation of every man is possible through the apprenhension of that demonstrable truth which is scientific, which emanates from Principle, and which is divine. On page 234 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes, "Whatever inspires with wisdom, Truth, or Love—be it song, sermon, or Science—blesses the human family with crumbs of comfort from Christ's table [note the definitive phrase], feeding the hungry and giving living waters to the thirsty." Christian Science is destructive of no good thing; on the contrary, it is the sense and substance of all good things.

John B. Willis.

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The Master's Program

January 15, 1916

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