We expect with faith that when God's way is known in the earth honesty will be regular, kindness will be prevalent, and men will have understanding hearts. Before this can be, however, much that is crooked must be made straight. It is not winding roads and crooked paths that we are concerned with, but human mentality operative to mislead, deceive, and confuse. Of the candid man one says, "He is straight," and that implies clear-eyed honesty, fairness in dealing, truth in utterance. But the secret agent, the spy, the scornful man must ever be crooked in his methods. The well-known phrase from Proverbs applies to him: "As he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee." Even in hospitality he is not true. He will offer it for a purpose, not for your benefit, indeed, but to find out your weakness. Eat and drink, he says, though his heart is not with your interests, but engaged in his own designs for your exploitation.
The Christian Science textbook is full of practical and comforting directions for Christian Science practice. It reveals to its adherents how to be happy within and to radiate happiness. It shows how to reflect peace and love. True-mindedness has its pattern in the Prophet of Nazareth, and we are exhorted, "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." Now when all men are evangelized there will be true practice and Christian thinking throughout the world. All men will be "straight," and there will be a clean world. We may have the same assurance that Peter had in looking for and expecting the coming of "new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness."
More and more is this new world being realized, for the way of the Lord is being prepared and the old world is indeed passing away. Men who loved darkness wherein to hide their evil deeds and crooked ways, are finding that the darkness does not conceal them, because a light shines in the world to-day, and its rays uncover their malpractice, and their deception is seen to be not clever and successful, but brutal and criminal. Hidden ways for accomplishing evil are nullified by spiritual knowledge; they are like the laborious underground tunnel discovered before the makers can lay the mine.
