Page:The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany.djvu/248

220 save him from bad physical results. Whatever changes come to this century or to any epoch, we may safely submit to the providence of God, to common justice, to the maintenance of individual rights, and to governmental usages. This statement should be so interpreted as to apply, on the basis of Christian Science, to the reporting of a contagious case to the proper authorities when the law so requires. When Jesus was questioned concerning obedience to human law, he replied: ‘Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's,’ even while you render ‘to God the things that are God's.’ ”

I believe in obeying the laws of the land. I practise and teach this obedience, since justice is the moral signification of law. Injustice denotes the absence of law. Each day I pray for the pacification of all national difficulties, for the brotherhood of man, for the end of idolatry and infidelity, and for the growth and establishment of Christian religion — Christ's Christianity. I also have faith that my prayer availeth, and that He who is overturning will overturn until He whose right it is shall reign. Each day I pray: “God bless my enemies; make them Thy friends; give them to know the joy and the peace of love.” Past, present, or future philosophy or religion, which departs from the instructions and example of the great Galilean Prophet, cannot be Christlike. Jesus obeyed human laws and fell a victim to those laws. But nineteen centuries have greatly improved human nature and human statutes. That the innocent should suffer for the guilty, seems less divine, and that humanity should share alike liberty of conscience, seems more divine to-day than it did yesterday.