It All Adds Up…

We have become increasingly aware of the so-called exact sciences⎯of mathematical formulas, for example from which can be forecast the forces of the inner atom and the orbiting of outer areas.

Order is evident in all of this⎯order, and the mind of an Infinite Administrator. But He, whose infinite orderliness is everywhere in evidence, has not left His children without laws of life that lead to results as sure, as certain, as the laws pertaining to physical phenomena⎯laws of health, moral laws, counsel, and commandments.

There has been a tendency by some to say that this age-old counsel on conduct may have served a purpose in the past, but is no longer essential to human happiness. But it simply is not so. There is no evidence that loose thinking or lax living or so-called emancipation from morals and manners has brought peace or happiness or progress to anyone⎯ever. And the Father of us all, in His love and wisdom pertaining to His children, hasn’t said “Thou shalt” and “Thou shalt not” for no particular purpose.

As Emerson said: “The world looks like a multiplication-table or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances itself . . . You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong . . . A man speak but he judges himself . . . Every secret is told, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty . . . The thief steals from himself. The swindler swindles himself . . . Men suffer all their life long, under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But it is . . . impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself. . . . What will you have? quoth God; pay for it and take it . . . thou shalt be paid exactly for what thou hast done, no more, no less.” To use the mathematical vernacular: It all adds up.

As William James worded it: “Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar.” Every thought and act and utterance is being counted “among the molecules and nerve cells and fibres.” “Nothing we ever do is in strict scientific literaliness wiped out.”

No amount of rationalizing can cancel out the fact that peace and quiet come with keeping clean, with keeping the commandments, and no amount of rationalizing can save us from the consequences of misconduct. We are the sum of the thoughts we think, of the habits we have, of all we do and have done. WE are the sum of all our actions and attitudes and utterances, of all things stored in body and mind and memory.

The laws given by a loving Father are always in force and always effective. His advice is worth taking. His commandments worth keeping. It all ads up.