Value of Righteous Thinkers

William P. McKenzie

There is something dramatic in Abraham's endeavor to discover how far the saving influence of the righteous would be effective. Informed as to the impending destruction of the licentious cities of the plain, in one of which his nephew Lot then lived, he interceded with the divine messenger, having large hopes as to the number of righteous men that might be in these cities. His intercession is related with all the leisureliness of the oriental tale. "Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein?" The answer to his question was that should there be in Sodom fifty righteous all the place would be spared for their sakes. Beginning to doubt his first vision of the possibilities, Abraham said, "Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous," and was again reassured. Next he made his proposal that there might only be forty, lessened it to thirty, then to twenty, and at last to ten, and the final reassurance was, "I will not destroy it for ten's sake."

Abraham evidently gave Lot credit for larger influence than he achieved. In the record given by Peter the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha are said to be in their overthrow "an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly," from which overthrow there was delivered "just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked: for that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds." Nevertheless he was so involved by domestic ties that he never thought of removing until under the urgency of the divine messengers it became not a question of removing but of escaping with his life.

If Lot had been able to teach but a small group to be righteous thinkers, for the sake of ten of them destruction might have been averted, but he was a maker of concessions and his evilly minded neighbors pressed in upon him, determined to dishonor even his angelic guests until they intervened and "smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door." When Abraham in the early morning viewed the plain, there was smoke as from a furnace where the cities had been, but though the cities were destroyed "God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow."

Some students of history have gone so far as to aver that the world was ripe for destruction and would have perished by its own corruption and cruelty but for the appearance of Christianity. Even though men were as brute beasts and dishonored the messengers of salvation, the Master whom they crucified, and his apostles whom they martyred, and the long list of heroes of faith "of whom the world was not worthy," constituted the leaven whereby the world perished not. Jesus testified of himself: "I came not to judge the world, but to save the world," and John his disciple explained this when he said, "God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him."

Although men in the name of Christianity have made too much of dogmas and too little of deeds, the Christian era has expressed continuously something of the saving power of Christian thinking. But materialism expressed in false philosophy has ever sought to undermine the influence of true Christianity. Jesus declared that the men of his time made God's commandments ineffectual by their tradition, and quoted Isaiah's saying as descriptive: "In vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." In the nineteenth century the human mind reached the point of declaring that the "commandments of men" should be considered infallible. About the same time arose also a doctrine of men that the state should also have its infallibility in that, as it had no conscience itself, it should be entirely freed from all restraint of such conscientious scruples as guide hones and kindly men. It was to be as a weapon of iron, resistless against the warm life and soft flesh of all who might stand in its way. Although Christendom had agreed to the commandments from Sinai as giving God's guidance, and the sixth, seventh, and eighth commandments of that code were especially for the protection of society, materialism laid its plans for action in violation of all three rules; hence to save the world again from destruction it was requisite that true thinking should antidote the destroying mesmerism, and that once again should be proclaimed "our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father."

Just at the right time, contemporaneous with the need, Christian Science was discovered by Mary Baker Eddy, and became the spiritual leaven whereby it became possible to realize the plan of its Discoverer "to organize a church designed to commemorate the word and works of our Master, which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing" (Manual, p. 17). This healing is not mere physical comfort, but also that "healing of the mind" which we all need. Healing in Christian Science ultimates in redemption from sin; that is, deliverance from the thinking of Sodoma. It teaches men to think from the basis of one Mind, the intelligence infinite which is also Love inexhaustible. It shows the way to salvation, defined in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 593) as "Life, Truth, and Love understood and demonstrated as supreme over all; sin, sickness, and death destroyed."

William P. McKenzie.

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