The herald., 1921-03-17
A LECTURE
Christian Science
Entitled
Christian Science;
The True Standard of Right
By
Bliss Knapp, c. S. B.
Member of the Board of Lectureshlp
OF The Mother Church, The First
Church OF Christ, Scientist,
in Boston, Massachusetts,.

An, ex-mayor of New York declared
not long ago, that "a person who wants
to be honest nowadays must De
crank on honesty That is Just
forcible way of describing the present
conflict between good and evil, and the
extent to which one must go to main
tain his standard of right. Nations
and individuals have been aroused as
never before to combat movement
commonly known as Bolshevism; ana
while armed forces have gathered TO
oppose its military Entertainments, It's
mental forces of decentralization In
business and society operate apparently
unhindered But there is a remedy
for such hidden evils in the promised
Comforter which Jesus described, not
as a person, but as the Spirit OF
truth" which will guide you into all
truth" When Christian Science
brought a return of primitive Chris
tian healing, it raised that standard
of Truth which makes US free in mind
and in body.
I remember when a child, with what
amaZement first discovered that some
people do not always speak the truth;
and | remember my perplexity as
begged to be told how to detect false
hood in ordinary conversation. My
difficulty gradually disappeared as
began to learn in Christian Science
that a right sense of honesty, based
upon Principle, is a keen detective OF
dishonest motives. We sometimes
sneak of that natural discernment as
intuition; for intuition is the ex-
pressed intelligence of spiritual quail
tiles. This may explain why so many
spiritually minded women often go di,
rectly and unerringly to the very heart
of a problem which seems to battle the
reasoning. process of others. Tha'
very directness is sometimes called "a
woman's reason
Questionable Standards.
Those who are unwilling to obey an
absolute standard of right, generally
have a flexible standard which i:
sometimes called the law of neces
sity." This phrase, 1.-The law of neces
sity," applies to those who are hones
in appearance, but who are quite ready
to act dishonesty whenever the re
ward seems to shift about. Such {
variable standard must be policy Of
deception, and not Principle. In TIT
book of Job, in the Bible, you may re
member how Satan once challenged
the purity of Jobs goodness, possibl!
because the Deceiver is always tn
most deceived. So he insisted tina
Jobs goodness was nothing but sub
terfuge to gain some reward in heaven
that is to say, form of selfishness
Those who make selfishness instead o
Principle the standard of their action
must agree with Satan in upholdin
"the law of necessity" But the fran
ers of the American Declaration o
Independence recognized an eterna
Truth when they wrote that me-
ARE endowed by their Creator wit
certain unalienable rights; that anon
these are life. liberty, and the pursui
of happiness" The God OF ChristeI
dom, therefore, is the divine Principl
! or Creator OF those life-giving and Ill
Grating fruits of the Spirit, which ar
expressed unselfishly in right-minde
men and women everywhere.
An intelligent pagan of educatio
and refinement may be found obeyin
the ordinary canons of honesty, b
cause he has learned that honesty wi
serve his best interests, therefore b
will be found acting as honestly as
can. But his standard of honesty
not the Christian God, or the divir
Principle of honesty; for he worship
god fashioned by the hand of ma
So long as he has no Principle, he ca
have no real qualities derived fro
Principle, and therefore no real SEN
of honesty. Thus a mans standard
right depends entirely upon the natu
of the God he worships.
According to the Century Dictionar
There are no two words in the En-
fish language used so confusedly OF
for the other as the words rule al
p inciple. :. :. :. You can make Tt''
you cannot make a principle: you ca
lay down a rule: you cannot, proper
speaking, lay down principle. 80.
You can only declare 1t. IL Is
principle that the Sabbath was ma
fer man. The fact that the four
Commandment is an emanation fro
Principle was the lesson Moses learn
from his experiences in the wilderne
with the mamma. Always the