"If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." So reads a familiar old saying—one which has been thoroughly tested throughout the years. We have tested it many times and in many ways without realizing, perhaps, that we were doing so; and have we not found it to be absolutely true that if we don't stand for what we believe to be right, we fall into all sorts of compromises and accept would-be substitutes for right which never satisfy?
It does not always seem easy, perhaps, to take one's stand for Principle and to be faithful to it, but it is a deeply satisfying thing to do. "Dare to be faithful to God and man," writes Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 253). It does, indeed, take daring to "be faithful to God and man," to stand for Principle as did Christ Jesus. It takes courage of the very highest kind. Love, too. And understanding. But it's worth it.
A young girl in the Christian Science Sunday School, who was spending part of her summer vacation at the seashore, began going about and doing things with a group of girls who were older than she. She was considerably flattered by their friendship and very happy in it, for there were no companions of her own age. Before long, however, it dawned upon her that many of the things they were doing— things which her friends said were essential to popularity and good times—were not at all according to her ideals of right conduct. Soon the young Christian Scientist determined to turn over a new leaf and take her stand for Principle—to "dare to be faithful to God and man."
