In her statement that "evil is sometimes a man's highest conception of right, until his grasp on good grows stronger" (Science and Health, p. 327), Mrs. Eddy has directed thought to a very significant factor in the determination of duty. It would be hard to find a more stern and inflexible term than this little word duty, for it insists inexorably that he who stands for the spiritual life shall meet every moral obligation pertaining to Christian profession. The abandon of moral enthusiasm which makes a man adequate to a threat crisis has always been accounted a very splendid and moving thing, but in demanding persistent conscientiousness in little things, duty calls for the yet higher and nobler courage which is born alone of patient love and right thinking.
In some sense and degree the conviction of duty, or conscience, has had a place in all forms of religious life. Eliminate the story of its influence and achievements, and the chronicles of the race would be despoiled of their most heroic and redeeming features. The saintly and self-forgetful have always found their inspiration in the mandate of this silent but potent arbiter of men, and in the effort to maintain its supremacy they have advanced toward the realization of life's noblest ends. The appeal of this moral sense is constantly referred to in general literature and conversation, and in the sanctuary of all aspiring hearts it glows like the Shekinah, and yet when asked for its meaning and explanation even the Christian world's answer is a Babel of apparent contradictions.
St. John opens his Gospel with the statement that the incarnate Word was "the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world;" and in his letter to the Romans, Paul refers to those unchristian Gentiles who, though they have no written law, "shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another." These passages have supported a universal hope, and nourished a growing conviction among Christians in general, that no one is or can be entirely separated from the divine touch in consciousness, and that every man unreached by the gospel is equitably judged upon the basis of his fidelity to his highest sense of duty. At this point, however, all thoughtful people are led to wonder how a divine law inscribed on the heart can be so variable as to explain the antagonism and conflict of those who seek its honor? This question has ever been no less troublesome than pertinent, and Christian Science brings to its consideration a light which is of inestimable value.
