God's Law of Righteousness

Ella W. Hoag

All through the Bible there runs a golden thread which links rewards with righteousness. Men have seen this gleam and have always longed so to lay hold of it that its promise would be proved true in their own lives. Students of the Scriptures have generally believed that obedience to God's law of righteousness should always result in blessing. At the same time they have often found it difficult to reconcile their own experience therewith. Live as righteously as they thought they could, there has not always resulted the reward they have desired, if indeed there has appeared to be any reward at all!

It does not take very deep thought to see several reasons why there has been this disappointment. The very familiar one, of thinking first of the reward, is to-day too plainly seen to be an entirely selfish one to deceive the humble Christian very long in his effort after righteousness. There has, however, also been much misunderstanding as to the exact nature of true righteousness. Until Christian Science was revealed, the eyes of men were largely closed to the great truth which the entire Bible teaches: namely, that there is no true righteousness but that which is of God. Starting as they have with self instead of with God, men have fulfilled Paul's saying, "They being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God."

It is with joy that the Christian Scientist awakens to the glorious truth that God's righteousness is the only righteousness there is. Immediately, this knowledge begins to free him from any uncertain sense as to what is and is not righteous. Delivering him from the belief that righteousness is something he must create for himself, the claim of false responsibility commences to drop away and he can turn to God with his whole heart to find the correct and perfect understanding of right, which has always existed, and with which, as the child of God, he has always been united.

Here is the "secret place" where he may stay all undisturbed whatever the grumblings and growlings of error, whatever its criticisms and misjudgments. So long as he is thinking and expressing only the righteousness which is of God, he is free from the claims of self-love and self-justification, which are the inevitable accompaniments of self-righteousness. Consequently, he can stand all unmoved, however desperately he may seem to be assailed. Jealousy and hatred will fail to reach him when he is buttressed about by the invincible truth that there is no righteousness but God's. He will understand that God's righteousness can no more be touched or vanquished than can God Himself. He therefore must be absolutely safe if he remains steadfastly within those impregnable bulwarks.

It is needless to say that the Christian Scientist has many a battle to fight, many a victory to win, before he can attain that understanding of perfect unity with the righteousness of God which Jesus exemplified so marvelously. But this is his goal, and nothing can hinder the honest heart from pressing steadfastly on until he reaches its earnestly desired heights. While the Christian Scientist goes on purifying his thinking of all belief in a righteousness apart from God,—of any belief in a personal power to be or do anything of itself,—he must just as steadfastly know that the reward of health and holiness is his by reflection here and now, as that God always includes all righteousness. It is as much a denial of God's all-power and all-presence to fail to cling to the facts of good as omnipresent as to deny Him as their one and only source.

It often seems to take us some time to learn to do this perfectly, especially as in the midst of doing it we may find we have failed to destroy in our thinking the belief that we can suffer for the mistaken thoughts and wrong intents of others. Here, too, we must rise to those heights of impersonal good where all sense of a false selfhood is lost in the understanding of man's perfect unity with infinite perfection. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 385) our beloved Leader writes, "Let us remember that the eternal law of right, though it can never annul the law which makes sin its own executioner, exempts man from all penalties but those due for wrong-doing."

Then with grateful joy let us all go constantly forward hungering and thirsting for that divine righteousness which can never be separated from the rewards which God's own law attaches to it. Again our Leader writes (ibid., p. 203), "In the Science of Christianity, Mind—omnipotence—has all-power, assigns sure rewards to righteousness, and shows that matter can neither heal nor make sick, create nor destroy;" and Isaiah declares, "The work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever."

Ella W. Hoag

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