JUSTICE

IMELDA OCTAVIA SHANKLIN.

Justice is the core of harmony. It is the balance that preserves the equation of the outgoing with the incoming. It is God in action matching God in repose.

The idea of justice usually meets with one of two misinterpretations. It is regarded as the compulsion and act of compensation, or as punishment for infraction of civil or moral law. Neither of these associations touches the heart of the matter. After compensation is made and while every phase of the law is kept, justice is preserved.

Justice is an unseen reality that works its nature outward into the phenomenal side of life. Recognition of its necessity is sanity, and steady effort to observe it is a sure evidence that the individual is intelligently proceeding with his quest for God. No success is possible while it is ignored, and no progress is real until it is installed as the chief inspiration of thought and deed. Its roots are deeper than the rights of possession; mine and thine are superficialities before its majesty. It is the perception that views universally while also seeing individually, and what it beholds stands before the eye of God.

Justice, like God, is omnipresent. Like God it may be ignored, and a life may be conducted on the theory that while obvious justice is avoided there is no reckoning with the spirit of the thing. This mistake occurs because the mind is habituated to act in the superficial, the essential being unconsidered as a part, the foundation, of the scheme. The law exacts the necessary restitution for the slightest violation of the balance.

It is taught that the dislodging of the smallest grain of matter changes the center of gravity for the universe. This must be true because all physical things, winds, waves and gravity work ceaselessly to restore noise where cataclysmic movement has disarranged the substance of

the earth.

This must be true, for God is never out of balance, and nature is God's visible garment. Cause inheres in mind. Justice, being the poise of infinitude, abides in the Infinite.

When the mind runs out from cause and attempts a disproportionate development along any line it swings the scales of justice out of poise. Straightway the law compels restitution, a striking of balance. God is equilibrium; keeping the mind focused on God is stable equilibrium; searching the superficial is unstable equilibrium, and the mind that roves among its moving vapors is ever occupied in establishing a new center of gravity.

All that appears emanates from substance. Justice guarantees a proportionate appearance, nothing being great, nothing being small; comparison becomes a study of character, dismissing its quantitative aspect.

Civil laws recognize justice as an inherent feature of life. The object of legislatures is to discover the surest methods of maintaining right between citizens. Treaties, arbitrations, and constabulary forces are modes of emphasizing and executing righteousness among men. Only those methods that elevate the perceptions can directly associate with justice in its primal nature. Punitive measures are the offsprings of the superstitions that translate justice into revenge.

In the physical body justice is recorded as a perfect balancing of every function. If intemperate force is expended on one idea congestion follows in the area representing the idea and a depletion ensues wherever the force has been misapplied or withheld. The body is in this way thrown out of balance. The suffering that attends the experience is not the penalty justice exacts. It is the movement of readjustment, the friction of the particles that are being arranged in conformity to the idea. As a matter of exactness, justice inflicts no penalties; it is a state characteristic of spiritual being. When mind tries to violate the nature of being the life elements

are disturbed and the disturbance continues until a balance is struck.

ness.

In social relations justice is preserved by unselfishWhen there are projected into the social environment ideas of self preference the equilibrium that should be preserved in the social body is disturbed. Jealousy and tenacity of prerogative strike corresponding agitations in other minds. Ambition wrestling for authority and things is a pettish child snatching toys from another child. No life involved in such encounters measures up to righteousness. From the stress of unrest it will evolve, but it is not free until its fingers relax their tenacious hold on the silly togs. Justice permits all things, but the law takes heed. That which we worship does not depart simply because we have turned to other things. The soul that would be free must look at success as the relation of life to being.

The popular representation of Justice as being blindfolded is correct in the respect that justice cannot discriminate and favor offenders. The one who is ignorant of the law must restore balance for every violation; the one who disturbs the poise of the scales in the hope of immunity through acquaintance with the law must also come to equilibrium. The swing of the scales may produce pain, but it is remedial in its activity. We learn by experience the things we will not otherwise be taught. Most searchingly, the eyes of justice are everywhere, and they observe all acts. The blindness of principle is exercised never toward violations, but always toward violators. Lack of sight is in the mind that argues justice to be unseeing because it is of a nature that cannot be seen.

All the demands of the law must be met. He that seeks to take more than he seeks to give brings upon himself the distresses that accompany the disturbance of the universal equilibrium. He that receives without making an effort to bestow tries to rob life; he is the

loser, for life is inviolate and no one comes forth from the prison of selfishness until he has paid the uttermost farthing imperiled by his lawlessness. He that thinks he can get something for nothing puts himself into one pan of the scales and God into the other; let him not be disappointed in finding that the ballast is not of equal weight.

The scales of life are suspended from the hand of God and swing upon the pivot of man's intelligence. One pan measures our estimate of self, the other holds our estimate of opportunity. Equipoise attests the intelligence that determines justly. All the sorrows of the world come from an over-estimate of self. All the glory of the Incarnate Son center in the observance of justice.

By the development of intelligence we become acquainted with the nature of life and learn to avoid the selfishness that would set our lives into the lives of others. This checks the tendency to pour into the pan of self. At this stage we are beginning to know justice.

As we acquire the command of mental forces that does not suffer the thoughts to be agitated by conditions we neither offer nor receive impulses. This is throwing into the pan of opportunity. Here we come into intimate relations with justice.

When we have arrived at the place where demand has nothing to do with externals we have unified ourselves with justice. "All that the Father hath is mine.” Forms change. God is the immeasurable opportunity.

Justice is not to be associated with punishment. Justice is the producer of harmony. The conscious hurt that comes from selfishness is registered in the area of physical or mental sensation, and is the action of substance in seeking balance. So responsive is substance that every impulse of selfishness produces a shock in its body, and man, incorporating substance into his life, receives the shock also. Anger, resentment, self aggrand

izement, violate the purity of the elemental body, and the violator receives the effect of his deed.

Individually, justice consists in keeping ourselves poised; it is a matter of balancing self with opportunity; does not permit desire to feed on the lotus of proselytizing, but acknowledges omnipresent intelligence; makes the outgoing to equal the incoming. When we observe justice we do not let the appearance of things bias judgment. Receiving affront disturbs the scales to the same degree that giving affront agitates them. We swing the scales out of balance in whatsover degree or manner we permit our perception of poise to be shaken. Justice does not suffer, is not offended. Man is the violator of substance, the sufferer for his act, and the restorer of balance.

When research is turned toward justice it is seen that abiding values reside in the invisible. It follows that the invisible value man appreciates will blossom in the visible as a testimony of the intelligence that cannot be deceived into thinking the self can be served by the abuse of opportunity. The children of justice are unselfishness, peace and love. The law never compels these to appear before the court of their mother.

Discouraged? Think not of the burdens, but count the blessings of your life. Do not the mercies far outnumber the trials? The world is not a wilderness of woe, as a hymn unwisely puts it; but it is our Father's glorious workmanship, and his work is always good.

Discouraged? Sit not idly by the wayside in sackcloth and ashes. Be a doer; strive for the blessings you would have; conquer the difficulties that beset your pathway; learn to find happiness in carrying happiness to others; learn the gospel of work and helpfulness, and there will be no room left in life for discouragement.Young People's Weekly.