Possibly much more than they realize, those who take their stand in a community as adherents of Christian Science are meticulously watched and their actions weighed by their fellows of differing faiths. Many people who stoutly maintain that they know nothing of and care less for this religion, show a startling familiarity with the Christian ideals for which it stands. Quick they are to detect what they consider to be the slightest deviation from the path of rectitude of anyone calling himself a Christian Scientist; all of which is as it should be. Did not the master Christian centuries ago tell the students of a healing Christianity that they were "the salt of the earth . . . the light of the world" and that cities "set on an hill cannot be hid"?
Thus it behooves the man, woman, and child known as students of Christian Science to be sedulously watchful, lest in their daily walk and conversation they fail to let their light shine and reveal the happy fact that they have found in Christian Science the way of Life. How often does one hear the timely, kindly warning when alighting from car or elevator, "Watch your step!" In these wartime days we are also reminded on posters to watch our lips, lest enemy ears be listening to careless utterances. One warning reads something like this: "Guard your lip and save a ship!" Might this not with benefit be paraphrased, "Let Love govern the lips and save a friendship!"
In the third chapter of the epistle of James, the apostle has much to say about the tongue, which he calls "an unruly evil." He writes: "In many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man." Let those who call themselves Christian Scientists pray that they "offend not in word" and thus possibly turn from this healing truth some seeker after light. Let them watch, lest they confuse those who have not learned the new tongue of spiritual sense, by unwisely "talking in the absolute," as the saying is.
