There is no term which suggests more of good and of ill than the word loyalty. Every darkest page of history has been illumined in some spot by the exhibition of a splendid devotion to a high ideal, while even the fairest annals of the doings of men have been marred by superstitious adherence to some low, ignoble sense of obligation. The word immediately brings to our remembrance that host of heroes who, counting all things else but loss, have faced every terror, borne every shame, and endured every suffering rather than prove untrue to some concept of virtue, of manliness, or of right. And yet what unspeakable iniquities and wrongs have been perpetuated as the result of individual fealty to some dogma of belief, some requirement of caste or clan, or some dictum of an ambitious and arbitrary overlord! In the chronicle of human events, loyalty has signified everything of good and well-nigh everything of evil, and there is great need in the world to-day for that spiritually discriminating thoughtfulness which the understanding of Christian Science brings to the determination of its true meaning.
In thinking of the matter, one notes at once the part which a sense of "loyalty to one's own" is playing in human life all about us. Who could ever tell of all the spontaneous amenities and joys, the glad sacrifices and devotions which pertain to the loyalties of family affection, and how all our days are sweetened and ennobled thereby? The many would at once say that life were not worth living without these self-givings and their return. This is the creative bond, the very substance of a true home, and the happy home makes possible the contented state, the stable nation, and every other good, one might say, of civilization.
So, too, who could measure the injustices and wrongs which have sprung from family feuds, from a false sense of loyalty to kindred?
