Truth is always winsome, but it never placates or appeases untruth. Truth stands upon its own permanence and beauty, and it is aware only of its own exclusive presence. Truth is infinite Mind, or God. Infinite Mind's expression of itself is man. Hence the individual who desire to prove himself to be man must do so by proving himself to be that by which infinite Mind, or Truth, expresses itself; in other words, that which is comprised of the qualities or spiritual ideas which make Truth manifest.

Such an individual is necessarily directing his efforts continuously toward greater and greater expression of Truth's unopposed presence, reality, and beauty. Within the range of his purpose there can be no desire to mollify any apparent attacker of Truth, for the unopposed status of Truth reduces to illusion both the attacker and the attacks which the attacker, being a dreamer, merely dreams that he is making.

Something of the wisdom, therefore, of dedicating oneself to the uninterrupted expression of Truth, and something of the folly of espousing any course of appeasement in human experience, is made plain in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science. There, for instance, Mrs. Eddy makes this remarkable statement (P. 238): "Attempts to conciliate society and so gain dominion over mankind, arise from worldly weakness."

In this statement Mrs. Eddy is unmistakably implying that the method of conciliation is at least sometimes attempted for the purpose of gaining dominion (domination, as the word is used here) over men, and she is saying that such attempt arises from worldly weekness. Close examination of her meaning, and application of it for the purpose of demonstrating its correctness, may prove to the demonstrator that she is even saying that attempts to conciliate society are always for the purpose of domination and that they are always the outcome of the incompetence of material thinking.

The word conciliate may have a useful meaning, such as to win someone from a state of hostility, but, wherever the word is used, emphasis is upon winning by pleasing acts rather than by applying Truth undeviatingly and proving that Truth is pleasing. A dictionary definition of conciliate employs such words as mollify, propitiate, appease. And these are words which the Christian Scientist knows are descriptive of worldly weakness. They are harsh words, too, in the ultimate result of any individual's attempt to make their meaning his ideal.

Truth is never harsh. It is simply immovable and unyielding in its loveliness, beneficence, attractiveness, and desirability. Hence it knows no conciliatory procedure, and it needs none. Thus Paul, touching both the steadfastness which must characterize that which expresses Truth and also the considerateness and love which are included in Truth's expression, urges his Christian flock (I Cor. 16:13, 14): "Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong. Let all your things be done with charity."

Doing your things with charity will certainly encompass noninterference with another in his progress toward proving that he is the man by whom Truth expresses itself. Demands of Truth are individual, for as has been previously stated here, Truth is God. God is individual, and He expresses Himself individually. Therefore the immovability of Truth is expressed in the fulfilled requirement upon each individual that he himself be unswerving in his commitment to his activity of expressing Truth. His own steadfastness will have its effect, as God outlines, in presenting convincingly to others the adamant beauty and dependable unchangeableness of Truth. Thus the devotee of Truth binds up wounds for others in accordance with his testifying to the inflexible compassion of Truth.

Doing your things with charity will certainly not include, however, a supercilious sense of encouragement for another based upon a deceptive assertion that he is right when he is wrong. It does not include the hypocrisy inherent in the winning of so-called friendship from a sinner by telling him there is no sin while he keeps on sinning. It is in such a sense of conciliation that human sense seeks maliciously or ignorantly to dominate mankind by keeping men content to be enslaved to sin—content, that is, to be inevitably mistaken in their thinking and therefore gullible because mistaken.

That is at least one reason why Mrs. Eddy, after pointing out that false mortal so-called qualities lead to disease and the belief in disease, urges her followers into the charity of no conciliation, saying (Science and Health, P. 419), "Your true course is to destroy the foe, and leave the field to God, Life, Truth, and Love, remembering that God and His ideas alone are real and harmonious." The foe is, of course, mortal sense. Something of the same authoritative status which Mrs. Eddy indicates that man derives from his Maker is also attested by the Psalmist when, addressing man's Principle, God, he says (8:6), "Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet."

The inflexible service required of man by Truth, God, should not present difficulty to anyone in his daily experience. True it is that many men and women follow vocations which are subject to termination unless they obtain approval of a prescribed number of individuals comprising the group they are employed to serve. Some frankly know they are periodically in need of votes. Nevertheless, there is nothing in their situation which changes the rule that their security, as well as the quality of their service, depends upon the integrity of their allegiance to Truth. Because Principle requires it, they will align themselves with what their clearest spiritual insight tells them is right, whether this takes the form of safeguarding the rights of minorities, of majorities, or of an individual. They will not conciliate in order to dominate.

Service to Principle does not mean imposition of one's thoughts upon another, however deeply one's thoughts may appear to him as unchallengeable convictions. It means obedience to God's thoughts on the part of each individual and acknowledgment and production of every individual in his own obedience to God's thoughts as he progressively recognizes them. Better to accept the security which God outlines for one who follows such a course than to reach for popularity through a false sense of dominion that is based on attempts to conciliate society.

On this point the Scriptures contain a promise which Christian Science supports unequivocally and which it recognizes as demonstrable (I John 2:17): "He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever."

George Channing