Choose You This Day Whom Ye Will Serve

When Joshua, the son of Nun, had gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, in glowing words he brought to their remembrance the perils by land and sea through which they had been safely and divinely guided. He concluded this summary by saying, “Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the Lord.” It will be seen that the Israelites’ first deliverance was from an outward slavery to a merciless Pharaoh, and their later deliverance was from an inward rebellion. These last fetters were of their own forging and had kept them wanderers forty years in the wilderness of Sin.

From these experiences of the children of Israel, we may trace an analogy to our liberation through Christian Science healing, and to our later deflections from the straight and narrow way. Our first bondage was the belief in sin, sickness, and death, and our bounds may have been a wheeled chair, a sick bed, or some form of degrading and enslaving sin. After our healing, in our joy in our new-found freedom, we need to be alert and watchful lest the belief in materiality hold us in bondage to a rejuvenated and healthy body. Though we are brought safely through the Red Sea of suffering, we may not be permitted to “pass over this Jordan, to go in to possess the land,” because we are bearing a self-imposed yoke of personal gratification, or, worse still, murmuring at the demands of Christian Science.

The commands of Moses and Joshua to the children of Israel were in no wise different from the demands Christian Science urges upon its followers to-day: a ready obedience, willing service, and a steadfast holding to the truth as revealed to us. Did our problem include a sense of financial limitation, and our liberation bring with it bountiful supply, we should be zealous lest we be unwittingly persuaded to sit by the wayside for a season to enjoy our good fortune. We read in Exodus that the manna which fell in the wilderness was for the day, and became unfit for food when kept longer. We should know that supply is wholly spiritual and therefore only to be enjoyed and increased by giving freely of our abundance.

Joshua admonished the children of Israel to put away the gods which their fathers served. Now these gods may from generation to generation change their outward and visible form, but the thoughts which would enthrone them are the same to-day as in the days of the Hebrew leaders. Dishonesty, self-aggrandizement, hatred, revenge, jealousy, pride,—these are the self-appointed creators of “false gods.” We are hourly choosing whom we will serve, and are given the opportunity to choose between the false gods of matter and the one living God of Spirit. We find as we progress that true service is a God-given capacity. Christian Science enlarges, deepens, and exalts our sense of service until we no longer experience the heart-breaking disappointments arising from our ever changing, shifting, clouded human sense of helpfulness.

Christian Science is a religion of service. Nothing can bridge the gulf between the old life of materiality and the new life of spiritual freedom save “putting off the old man” with all that implies. Whatsoever savors of earthliness flees before implicit obedience to spiritual demands. These demands include the injunction, “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.” It is to the discredit of Christian history that mankind has not come to recognize fully the imperative requirements of such service. There are boundless possibilities for him who would labor in His vineyard, if this be only the cup of cold water given in His name.

Modesty of service is righteous service, and he who sees this point and joyfully acts upon it has taken his first step heavenward and is even now ready for greater things. In this humble service of God we find ourselves bountifully served. As all right activity originates in divine Love, it will be found that loving activity along spiritual lines is invariably rewarded by greater freedom from inharmonious conditions and from the confusion and uncertainty which are known to attend the processes of mortal mind.

On page 351 of “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy, we read: “The Israelites centred their thoughts on the material in their attempted worship of the spiritual. To them matter was substance, and Spirit was shadow. They thought to worship Spirit from a material standpoint, -but this was impossible.” So potent, so “quick, and powerful” is the word of God when voiced with spiritual understanding that one may speedily prove that Spirit is indeed substance and the false material belief but shadow. In the commercial world, mankind is coming rapidly to see that labor which offers no share in results is dwarfing and stultifying. We have in Christian Science a field for effort wherein we may receive full share of benefits accruing for work well done. Every righteous thought and deed returns to us laden with blessings manifold. Learning the lesson of man’s unity with changeless, infallible Principle, it dawns upon us that our poor human concept of justice, right, and equity may be far from coinciding with Principle, and we gladly surrender our beliefs to the ruling of divine Mind, happily concurring in results obtained through such process of reasoning.

The student of Christian Science is sure of his place in a universe governed by his loving Father, and therefore sure of his reward for work well done. So absolutely certain is he of this that he leaves all thought of personal benefit out of his calculations, and goes joyfully to his work with a mind freed from the limiting sense of self-interest. If in the present world-wide upheaval and overturning of material conditions he finds that which appears to be his rightful position occupied by another, he well knows that each idea has its rightful place in Mind, therefore no competition for place can exist; and if faithful in doing his work scientifically, he is certain of finding the position which rightly belongs to him.

Mortal mind has a way of putting off its good deeds as well as its healing until to-morrow. To-morrow it will serve and be served. Heaven is to-day, healing is to-day. Eternity is made up of to-days. When we shall have reached that state of perfect bliss to which all Christendom aspires, we shall find there one perfect day— that day which “is with the Lord as a thousand years.” We shall find that God is, Love is, Life is, and that tomorrow with its deceptive procrastination is forever blotted out of the calendar of heaven-filled days. There is a deep lesson for us all in that inspiring hymn on page 221 of the Christian Science Hymnal, one verse of which begins:—

“By the thorn-road and no other
Is the mount of vision won.”

That which tends to make the thorn-road seem so long and difficult is our determination to take with us that which can never be taken elsewhere than over a thorn-road,—personality. As personality is the one factor in our tangled wilderness of human relationship, and as from earliest infancy we have bowed down to it in love or from fear, and have served it as the Israelites served Pharaoh, we should strive to gain the proper perspective of personality if we would be whole-hearted servants of the living God.

Mrs. Eddy writes on page 331 of Science and Health, “Life, Truth, and Love constitute the triune Person called God,—that is the triply divine Principle, Love. They represent a trinity in unity, three in one,—the same in essence, though multiform in office: God the Father-Mother; Christ the spiritual idea of sonship; divine Science or the Holy Comforter. These three express in divine Science the threefold, essential nature of the infinite. They also indicate the divine Principle of scientific being, the intelligent relation of God to man and the universe.”

From this it will be seen that the right adjustment is not complex after all, and through our firm denial of fleshly personality and refusal to serve “other gods” we catch glorious glimpses of the one divine Principle, and in so doing we find the joy of human relationship enhanced. We need not then be driven to the wilderness to find the real selfhood, the man of God’s creating. Thus shall the desert “blossom as the rose,” and the thorn-road flower with lilies of self-renunciation.