LIKE every good human quality, fidelity must be governed by divine understanding before it can be safe from perversion. Christian Science finds every individual in a certain stage of thought, and there and then a process of development is initiated which should never stop until the human is transformed into the image of the divine. Yet it would be unwise to try to hasten this development through any effort of human will-power. Growth should be natural, leading from the scientific application of Principle to daily and hourly demonstration of the truth of being. Christian Science, therefore, finds every individual giving expression to some sort of fidelity, generally to some person, frequently to some undeveloped sense of good. It is not the purpose of Christian Science to destroy such imperfect efforts to express fidelity, but to educate them into a final fundamental fidelity to God and His manifestation.
The rudimental concept of fidelity found in the slave to his master, the soldier to his commander, the citizen to his country, are states of development seemingly necessary in human education until fidelity to divine Principle and its idea is reached. In writing to Titus, Paul said, "Exhort servants to be obedient unto their own masters, and to please them well in all things; not answering again; not purloining, but showing all good fidelity." Such fidelity is not abrogated by spiritual growth, but enriched. Fidelity to duty is a step in the right direction, but it is not complete until duty itself becomes a joy, until fidelity is spontaneous, so unlabored as to seem natural and quite instinctive.
Doing one's duty out of a merely material sense of obligation is based upon a cold and cheerless motive. Such conduct has none of the glow of love, and will be found incapable of reforming the sinner or healing the sick. The fidelity of the medieval clansman led him to be willing to commit crimes in behalf of his chief and clan, and it is curious that while individual fidelity has taken many a long step in advance since that day, collective fidelity as represented by the nation is still in very much the same stage. Thus the acts of lying, stealing, and taking life, which are universally accounted crimes when perpetrated by one individual upon another, are still considered excusable, if not laudable, when committed by one nation upon another. There is here evidently great room for improvement, and the dawn of a new international morality is doubtless not very far distant.
