Not Just Right, But the Highest Right

                                                        John Robert Howell


        If we are not watchful we can easily find ourselves satisfied with traversing merely the right road in life.  While this is fine, up to a point, we students of Christian Science need to push on to the highest right road.

        There is nothing wrong with striving for honesty, affection, compassion, hope, faith, and meekness -- qualities Mrs. Eddy defines as "moral" and "Evil beliefs disappearing".  (see Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures 115:26-27)

        The Student's Dictionary defines moral in part as:  "Relating to the practice, manners, or conduct of men, as social beings, in relation to each other, and with reference to right and wrong."  So, although there is certainly nothing wrong with these moral qualities, they do  not represent our highest ultimate goal, which Mrs. Eddy gives in our textbook on the next page, 116 -- reaching wisdom, purity, spiritual understanding, spiritual power, love, health, holiness.  (The margin note here states "reality" which I find instructive.)

        We need to watch and pray that we are ever alert and searching for the road Christ Jesus walked for us, narrow though it may be, and that we do not get fooled into settling into a pleasant, self-satisfaction for having achieved some mastery of the moral qualities.  Moral qualities alone, such as "humanity", can still leave open the possibility for thought to wander onto wrong paths.

        We cannot ever afford to relax our vigilance while we are still dealing with anything, no matter how benign seeming, in the mortal, human realm.  Temperance, for example, denies that we succumb to excess in the human.  Holiness denies the presence and reality of the human altogether.  When holiness is achieved, there will be no wrong road to take to experiences that would make us think God is not All-in-all, which our Master proved He is.