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LOUISE DELISLE RADZINSKI
Such remarks, often addressed to Christian Scientists by inquirers into Science, disclose a thought that needs careful handling. The time has passed when the tyro in Christian Science can feel justified in answering tales of suffering and grief with the assertion, "There is no such thing as pain, and there is nothing in the world to grieve about." Such speeches make one feel that love is indeed a missing quantity, rather than ever-present. Years of faithful teaching and devoted example from our beloved Leader have brought the student of Christian Science through the stony wilderness of intellectual depreciation into the Promised Land of Love, and the complaint that Scientists are lacking in love and sympathy, though, still heard from persons taking their first steps in Science, is usually met in a manner that satisfies the craving for an intelligent understanding of the inmost needs of the affections. Scientists know that the old conception of love and sympathy, which they too once held most dear and precious, is but as the coarse husk of that which has become to them the veritable kernel of truth. They have learned that love, instead of being a merely personal attachment to certain personal characteristics, or even physical features, is the constant and all-absorbing desire for the welfare of all others, and the recognition of the reflection of good by others; and the delight of love dwells in the consciousness of unity in good — God. When this sense of love is achieved, sympathy is joyous, for then only the God-like reflection of good is seen, and all beliefs in evil, pain, and grief must vanish as the morning mists melt before the ascending sun. The remark at the head of this article came to the writer with a shock at the time she first heard it, but she has heard similar remarks many times since, and has answered them in various ways. To the speaker quoted above she replied, "Which has helped you most to rise out of the beliefs that bound and crippled you, the tears and sighs of your unscientific friends, or the denial of the claims error laid upon you, by the Christian Scientist who perhaps was silent for an instant before she offered you a cheerful thought of God's love for His children, of your heirship? and lifelong right to this love, of God's omnipotence and the consequent invalidity of all claims of fear or of human sympathy? What is human sympathy founded upon but pity caused by the remembrance of such suffering in one's own experience in the past, or fear of it in the future? Which has brought you healing; the expressed belief in the reality of the pain from which you were suffering, or the scientific understanding of the unreality of that pain, as having no foundation in good? When Science, the understanding of divine Love, came to rescue you, what came of it?" The answer came quickly, "This came of it, — my fear, my belief in death, was destroyed. I felt at once that I was to live — live and be well. I did feel that God, Life, was with me; all my terrors, all my griefs slipped away from me, and a sleep came that was blissful rest; and here I am a well and strong, happy woman, and I know I was healed through the realization of the divine Love that meets all our needs. When I stop to think, I see that the truest sympathy is the demonstration of that divine Love, and as Love knoweth no evil, of course Scientists cannot recognize it as a real factor in life. What I want in my life as a Christian Scientist is to demonstrate Love, and by destroying the belief in the claims of error, to set free those that are bound by these chains, so that the sufferer shall feel the love that blesses him." "Now," I said, "I should like you to tell me when you became conscious of the lack of sympathy of which you complain?" "While I was under treatment I dwelt in an atmosphere of perfect love; I felt it about me, and in me; I knew the almighty arms were beneath me; I knew His angels were about me, and would bear me up in their hands. For weeks I dwelt in that delightful consciousness of the presence of God; then, when I was well enough to go to Christian Science service, the atmosphere of love and unity I found there was delightful to me and very helpful; but after a while I wondered that the people who met me so kindly, who showed so much interest in my recovery from sickness, should never ask for details of my sickness as other people usually do; the healing was all they seemed to care for, they did not seem to care for me as a person, only as a believer in Christian Science, and I was rather hurt. Can you help me see this matter properly?" "I think a few questions will help you to understand this matter," I replied. "What was the effect upon you, mentally and physically, when you used to rehearse to your friends the details of your sickness, your symptoms and sufferings?" "Why, sometimes it brought them all back upon me, and my doctor would forbid my seeing visitors for several days, and I had some lonely hours with nothing to take my mind off myself." "What did your Christian Science healer advise you to do to pass the time of convalescence?" "Oh, there was not a very long time; I was up and about very soon. She told me not to talk about my sickness if I wished to be well; that it was an evil dream, and that to talk about it, gave it all the reality it had, and kept the falsehood alive. She gave me passages from the Scriptures and from Science and Health to think of, telling me I must keep my mind full of good, true things if I would keep my body well; and I have told you how happy I was while under her treatment and following her advice." "Do you see now why Christian Scientists take no part in conversations of which the subjects are evil, sin, disease, and death? Christian Scientists are enlisted to destroy these beliefs which men have accepted as truths, and they could not speak of them except to denounce them. They do denounce them aloud or silently as wisdom directs, and they present to sufferers the true picture of God and life, that they may lose sight of the error they had cherished as true and real. Many a patient has said to the Christian Science practitioner, I had so many things to tell you! But they have all dropped out of my thought, I suppose they were errors, or I should remember them. "True sympathy calls forth the spiritual and real, blotting out the sensuous, material, and unreal; elevating thought into realms of true feeling, the sense or consciousness of Life demonstrating the power of good and the unity of God's children in Him as good, thereby losing evil, sin, sickness, and death as realities, or as the absorbing topics of thought, or of conversation. "Can you imagine what this world, what this life, would become if this ideal of sympathy were general, and not confined to a few individuals? "Then thought would take cognizance only of that which is beautiful with the beauty of Truth; of that which is noble with the goodness of good; of that which is real with the reality of Love."
The Christian Science Journal, August, 1903 |
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