When we read in the history books of the people whose lives illumine the past, we may well be filled not only with gratitude for their contribution to human progress but with awe as we recognize the courage and steadfastness many of them expressed. Through the years, reformers, inventors, educators, philanthropists, leaders in government and religion, have not only caught the vision of some advanced concept of truth and life that others did not have before, but they have cherished and promoted it with single-minded fidelity, so that society could know of it and thereby benefit.
Paradoxically, though, human thought is so prone to be fixed in the traditional that the success of these men and women often did not come easily. The world's progress had to be bought with the price of their consistent and persistent effort.
In our present time, as the revolutionary understanding of God's eternally perfect, spiritual kingdom, and His reign of universal justice and harmony, are progressively coming to light in the lives of individuals, there is no reason to assume that the demands upon today's luminaries are any less exacting. It often happens that when through study of this Science someone has gained a glimpse of a spiritual idea of divine Truth that is new to most of humanity he knows how valuable it is because it healed him. His immediate reaction is to tell the whole world of it and try to explain what a blessing it could be. But, surprisingly, he often finds the world is unreceptive. It doesn't want to hear.
What, then, is his reaction?
The suggestion may come to leave everything to the divine Mind, God—to sit back and hope to watch the miraculous establishment of the vision in world thought through divine power. After all, the argument may continue, God, eternal Mind, is not only the source of the idea but the power impelling it into human consciousness through the Christ. Surely, the tempter whispers, nothing more is required of the individual who has glimpsed it than to wait for its general acceptance and the fulfillment of its divine purpose in the world.
Yet, further unfoldment must show that to believe this is superstitious and unrealistic—even selfish. The Bible gives many examples of God's revelation of Truth coming to individuals, and it makes clear that the spiritual message was accompanied by distinct instruction as to what these people were to do to promulgate it for the benefit of humanity.
Two outstanding examples are those of Moses and Paul. Not only inspired but commissioned by God, they both accepted the responsibility of being preachers to the world of the Word of God, not hearers only, and they became great religious leaders. When the call came to Moses to lead the Israelites out of slavery, despite the challenges, the problems, and the rebelliousness of the people, he taught them God's law and led them through the wilderness. The truths he taught are as vital to our welfare now as they were more than three thousand years ago.
Centuries later, a vision of the Christ, coming to the early Christian Ananias, announced Paul's mission: "He is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel." Acts 9:15; After his conversion to Christianity, no one was ever more active than Paul in spreading the gospel.
Both Moses and Paul were radical in their response, and so were many others. With the revelation of spiritual truth came God's call to them to work for Him, and they shouldered the responsibility, confident that He would also supply them with the needed strength, wisdom, and ability to accomplish the task He had commissioned them to do. They did not wait to hear the call again—just to be sure they had not misheard the first time. Nor did they act hastily without divine direction. They listened and obeyed.
The receptivity, responsiveness, and responsibility so evident in the great leaders of Bible history were also prominent in Mrs. Eddy. Describing the divine demand laid upon her by her discovery of Christian Science, she writes in the Preface of her book Science and Health, "When God called the author to proclaim His Gospel to this age, there came also the charge to plant and water His vineyard." Science and Health, p. xi; And elsewhere she says of her willing role in the divine plan for mankind's spiritual progress, "As of old, I stand with sandals on and staff in hand, waiting for the watchword and the revelation of what, how, whither." And she continues, "Let us be faithful and obedient, and God will do the rest." Miscellaneous Writings, p. 158;
After God revealed to her the Science of Christ, Mrs. Eddy's own life was a model of fidelity and obedience. Over the following more than forty years she was quick to respond to God's direction, devoting her entire energy under His command to the work of Founder and Leader of the now worldwide Church of Christ, Scientist. Hers was a gigantic task, but she did not shirk it, and the healing influence of the spiritual ideas she launched into human thought through her writings not only healed and blessed the people of her period but will be felt through all time to come.
And what of those who receive this revelation of the Science of Christ today— who accept and are healed by the message of God's infinite love for man, the perfection of His universe, and the pure, spiritual nature of true being? They, too, have a responsibility to their contemporaries and to posterity.
"Will you give yourselves wholly and irrevocably to the great work of establishing the truth, the gospel, and the Science which are necessary to the salvation of the world from error, sin, disease, and death?" Mrs. Eddy once said to a gathering of her followers. And she went on, "Answer at once and practically, and answer aright!" ibid., p. 177.
