Most people in a general way admit the necessity for obedience. Not so many, however, are willing to admit the need of obedience to the divine will; while all too few are willing to pay the price of obedience by eliminating from their thinking hatred, envy, jealousy, anger, resentment, and other evil qualities. Yet these errors must be eliminated, if on our part there is to be willing obedience to God; for they blind us to our duty both to God and to our fellow-man. They should have no place in the mental home of the Christian Scientist; and should any of them be found there, they should be dealt with as outlaws, as false thoughts. Unless one guards his consciousness against all errors of thought, they will attempt to rob him of his possessions—right ideas; if he admits them to his mental home, they will try to create so much disturbance that he will not be able to hear the "still small voice" of Truth. Obedience does not dwell in the same consciousness with these disturbers of the peace.
Obedience should become a habit with us. Then it will not forsake us in a crisis. Habits, as we know, become established as such through frequent repetition. It is thus, too, that the habit of obedience is formed —through keeping thought and desire constantly in the line of duty, and subordinating our own personal wills to the divine will. Says Mrs. Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 62), "The entire education of children should be such as to form habits of obedience to the moral and spiritual law, with which the child can meet and master the belief in so-called physical laws, a belief which breeds disease." One who has been thus directed in the formation of habits of obedience will find that he has acquired something of inestimable value; for, whatever his business in life, it will help him to make right decisions. In our relations with other people we are repeatedly confronted with situations where it is necessary to make a choice of ways. In such cases, before finally deciding, do we make it a practice prayerfully to seek divine guidance? Or do we plunge ahead, trusting to something or other, which we may call luck, to bring the matter to a happy conclusion? The way of right prayer is the way of obedience.
It is the restrictions of law against which the disobedient rebel. Yet it is because of their disobedience that restrictions or inhibitions are necessary. The disobedient one may think he is accomplishing something when he breaks the law without being discovered. Sometime he will awake to the fact that his lawlessness, together with the lawlessness of others of his class, has brought about the very restrictions of which he complains. The obedient do not find the law restrictive. On the contrary, they find these restrictions a help to them, because they are consciously able to work with and not against the forces of law and order. "Wherefore," says Paul, "the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith."
