WHEN a case is tried in a court of law the witness is a most important factor in the result, and a good witness may largely influence or even determine the verdict of the jury. The witness is selected for his knowledge of the facts and his identification with the interests of the litigant on whose side he testifies. Although sworn to tell the truth, he is not expected to make any statements except in answer to the questions asked; and all the ingenuity of the opposing lawyers will be taxed in devising such questions as will elicit only the facts favorable to their respective sides of the controversy. If his testimony presents a strong array of facts sustaining the claims of the party who called him to the stand, and if it remains unshaken by the cross-examination, he is accounted a good witness. The opposing counsel will seek to entrap him into self-contradictions, to confuse his thought, to discredit his memory, perhaps browbeat him into timidity or to irritate him into loss of temper and angry reply,— anything to break the force of his calm, confident, straightforward narration of facts to the jury; but if these efforts fail he is a good witness.
In the long-waged and hotly contested trial before the court of the human consciousness, between Life, Truth, and Love on one side and the material beliefs of mortal mind on the other, man is the witness for God. "Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord" (Isaiah, 43: 10); and the context in the 43rd and 44th chapters clearly shows the character of the testimony of this witness. Man, "made in the image and likeness of God," "the idea of divine Principle," who "reflects spiritually all that belongs to his Maker" (Science and Health, p. 475), knows the facts, and is eternally identified with the interests of his Father, God. He has no sympathy with error, and raises no voice in its behalf; for "what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with Belial?" Man testifies to the allness of God, the supremacy and all-sufficiency of Spirit, and the consequent nothingness of any claimant that does not reflect the nature and character of God. Man, as made by God, is His representative witness. "Ye are my witnesses saith the Lord."' "Man and his Maker are correlated in divine Science, and consciousness is cognizant only of the things of God" (Science and Health, p. 276).
If the spirituality of the real man is evident from my fitness as a witness of God, so is a mission clearly enjoined upon me in the words, "Ye are my witnesses." Not only should I be ready on all suitable occasions to testify orally to the healing power of Truth and the redeeming efficacy of Love; but my daily conduct should be so regulated as to manifest to the world, not so much in words as by deeds, the sonship which was so clearly perceived, affirmed, understood, and demonstrated by Jesus. What a noble witness was he for God! how faithfully he voiced Truth, how triumphantly he demonstrated the dominion of man, as the Son of God, over sin, sickness, and death! Let me, as diligently as I may, follow him, illustrating the words of St. Paul, "That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world." In business, in society, in the household, in the workshop, let me remember that God has called me to be His witness, and constantly send out into the human consciousness my testimony for Life, Truth, and Love.
