Few words in the language have so many meanings and shades of meanings as the word "stand" and its derivative, "standard," and nearly all these meanings may be applied to Some phase of the problem of working out our salvation. As defined in the dictionary, to stand may mean "to maintain an invincible or permanent attitude; to be firm; to be consistent; to maintain one's ground; not to fail or yield; to be safe." On the other hand, it may mean, according to the same authority, "to cease from progress, to halt, to remain stationary; to stagnate, to be motionless." Whether we stand upon the firm foundation laid by the first class of definitions, or on the shifting sands described in the second class determines whether our next step will be an advance or a retrogression.
Returning to the lexicon, we find the two principal definitions of standard to be, first, "That which is established by authority as a rule for the measure of quantity, extent, value or quality;" second, "That which is established as a rule by authority, custom, or general consent." Note the foundation upon which each of these definition rests. The first defines a standard that is based upon authority, supreme, unchanging, ultimate; the second, a standard the basis of which is divided between authority and custom, between granite and shale, a cleft stone resting in the quicksands of human caprice and false material reasoning. By the first standard true measures only may be determined because the markings on the rule are exact, laid off according to Principle, and no one can use this rule except he be taught by Principle how to apply it. It is as useless to the material reasoner as the theorems of geometry to the child just learning to count its fingers, but in the hands of one who knows its use, who can read and understand its graduations and who can look out upon and comprehend the infinity of extent, quantity, quality, and value, it proves these to be limitless, the immeasurable expressions of God's bountiful gifts to His offspring.
Mortal man's sense of measuring is dividing, and, having only mortals among whom to distribute and only material things to be divided, he is sometimes quite content with a false standard and is ready to defend his accepted standard as the true one, ignorant of the fact that it can never give him a correct result. He imagines that he is meting out value by extent and quality, only to see the object of his labors decay and fall into dust before his eyes. Thinking to increase his store, he changes his standard by genera! consent of other mortal minds, but he finds he is still measuring the same material, perishable counterfeits of good, and while he may pile up more of the husks by his new standard and even build greater barns to hold them, he has no more satisfying a portion than before.
