A MIGHTY call has come to modern Christendom. An exhortation, swelling with ever-increasing volume and advancing with irresistible momentum, is urging Christians everywhere to return to their "first love" and do the "first works." Insistently and persistently the import of these stirring words of St. John, used in his address to the angel of the church of Ephesus, is being urged in our day upon all mankind by the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. The message is being heard, and obedience, thereto is proving its origin divine, is providing a respite for multitudes from the woes of sin, sickness, and death.
It is a curious commentary upon human conduct that even before primitive Christianity had fairly become established as a system of religion, Christians already had to be reminded not to leave their "first love," but to repent and do the "first works." This warning is to be found in the opening verses of the second chapter of Revelation. It is as though the Revelator had been obliged to chide certain of his fellow-Christians, thus early, for losing their first enthusiasm for righteousness, and for abandoning that practice of Christianity which constituted then, as it does now, the proof and demonstration of its essential and distinctive utility.
This same admonition has come ringing down the centuries to all those who have named the name of Christ. It serves as a clarion call to awaken the attention of those who may be distracted by the pains or pleasures of sense. It exhorts them not to allow themselves at any time to be turned from joyful alertness to duty, from spontaneous activity in well doing and natural delight in good deeds. It also acts as a summons to those who, yielding to formalism in religion, might be tempted to forget to do the first works of Christianity. St. John's words register a protest against merely theoretical or doctrinal theology, and point clearly to the necessity for the constant demonstration of the Christ-teaching in daily life. Had this protest been properly heeded, it is certain that Christendom would have been spared its dark periods of oppression and depression. Christians would never have been satisfied with creeds which embrace the belief in a divided garment of Truth, and the art of healing by spiritual means would never have become a lost art, to be re-discovered in our own day.
