IN the Bible we read: "The word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, . . . and cry against it ... But Jonah rose up to flee . . . from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it. ... But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, ... so that the ship was like to be broken. Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god . . . But Jonah . . . was fast asleep. So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not."
This question propounded to Jonah by the shipmaster comes with special, searching significance to every one who has been touched by the message of Christian Science; for every student of this pristine Christianity is figuratively in the same position as was Jonah before he "rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord," when he mistakenly sought to escape from the dictates of his own conscience, which told him what it was his duty to do. To the student of Christian Science, as to Jonah, "the word of the Lord" has come with its order to act, and there is only the choice of taking the consequence for leaving undone the task set before him, or of doing it. The matter of choice is left open; but whether it be soon or late, the allotted work must be performed.
This task is the same for every one. It is not a call to mere preaching or exhortation, as in times past the words of the Scripture have been interpreted to mean. It is one of rectification of thought, an individual duty imposed by that "still small voice" called conscience, which says, "This is the way, walk ye in it." By listening to and obeying this voice, the willing hearer must of necessity become the doer. Thus will he prove more eloquently than by words, first to himself and then to those who behold his good works, that "the best sermon ever preached is Truth practised and demonstrated by the destruction of sin, sickness, and death" (Science and Health, p. 201).
