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NELLIE B. MACE
The day of the superficial analysis of the world struggle has long since passed. Nation after nation has been drawn into the conflict whether it would or not, and individuals, one by one, have been compelled to consider and perhaps revise their heart's allegiance. Out of hesitating and fluctuating opinions the conviction gradually emerged that the issue was joined between democratic and autocratic ideals of government. But what of the origin of those ideals? A clearer distinction is being made between spirituality and materiality, between the creative divine Mind with its spiritual phenomena and the false carnal mind with its sense phenomena; and men are everywhere being driven to a deeper analysis of the world struggle. To those who will understand, Christian Science reveals the absolute nature of Spirit, its all-inclusiveness and its harmony. As a consequence of this better understanding of the allness of Spirit and the perfection of spiritual man and the universe, the evanescence, the illusiveness and unreality of the material world and all sense testimony, is recognized. In the spiritual reality there is no struggle, nothing that needs to make any sacrifice to atone for departure from the ideal, since all of God's ideas exist forever in perfect unity with divine Principle. The sense of sacrifice is a wholly human concept; it is the measure of the human mind's separation from Principle, and it necessitates, therefore, in the final sense, the renunciation of all materiality. Although there were long historic periods in which a perverted sense of sacrifice resulted in merely superstitious and idolatrous rites, yet sacrifice in its original and true sense has ever stood as a type of the destruction, through allegiance to the ideal, of whatever obstructive belief lies between the human mind and divine Principle. Now the deeper the materialism in which the human mind is submerged the greater, obviously, is the need of sacrifice; but materialism will never make that sacrifice, for the simple reason that materialism knows nothing of divine Principle and seeks nothing but the perpetuation of its own evil sense and will. The falsely styled sacrifices of materialism are nothing more than oblations to its false gods, gratifications of its passions and desires, and materialism is not destroyed but increased in the process. Thus it is that true sacrifice can be made only by those who have gained some understanding of divine Principle, and who for the love of Principle are willing to renounce the human will that stands as a barrier between them and the perfect realization of spiritual law and order. This is the secret of the just suffering for the unjust, and this fact explains the inspiration which has led and sustained the nations in Armageddon, in which materialism and the forces of evil are being destroyed, and out of which, as we read in the twelfth chapter of Daniel's prophecy, "many shall be purified, and made white, and tried." Jesus the Christ came to earth to show men the way out of the flesh. He began his ministry by proving, in those forty days in the wilderness, the utter nothingness of the material sense of life and intelligence. He knew that all man really possesses, all that he loves, is spiritual, wholly distinct from matter. Then because of his understanding of the spiritual idea, he willingly taught others how to destroy all the errors of the carnal mind, in order that there might be revealed to men freed from materiality "a new heaven and a new earth," the true dwelling place of man as a spiritual being, as the child of God. Jesus proved that the asserted substance and laws of matter are unreal, the forces of evil powerless. He showed disease to be illusion and death nonexistent. He was able to do all this because he knew that the appetites and passions of the carnal mind have no power over God's man; because, in short, he sacrificed to Principle the entire belief in any possible life and intelligence in matter opposed to Spirit. On page 54 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy says of him and his mission, "That he might liberally pour his dear-bought treasures into empty or sin-filled human storehouses, was the inspiration of Jesus' intense human sacrifice." By his willingness to take all of the necessary human steps out of the false sense of life into the reality of spiritual being, he not only taught others how to take those steps but showed that each one must inevitably take them. By his utter self-surrender he proved divine Love to be the Principle of his demonstration, and his inspiration. It was out of the authority of his own demonstration of divine Love that he declared, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends;" and out of his divine enthusiasm he was able also to say, "These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." Now it depends upon each one individually whether he shall willingly sacrifice the appetites and passions of the carnal mind for the love of the spiritual idea, and in this surrender experience the joy of the Christ, or whether he shall learn, through the pangs he suffers in his resistance to Truth, the unprofitableness, the nothingness of the lusts of the flesh. On page 16 of Science and Health we read, "A great sacrifice of material things must precede this advanced spiritual understanding." In any case, whether a man advances out of materiality through obedience to Principle or is purged of his sensuousness through suffering, the eventual destruction of materiality is inevitable. In this respect nations are not different from individuals. The collective beliefs of individuals are manifested in organized ambition, domination, tyranny, and greed; and it is the resistance of organized evil to Principle that has produced the phenomenon of the struggle of the nations. In this struggle, those nations as well as those individuals who most clearly perceive Truth will, with unstinted devotion, pour into human consciousness all that they understand and all that they love of the spiritual idea, to the end that carnality may be vanquished and justice and righteousness scientifically established upon the earth. The onward sweep of democracy, of prohibition, of equal suffrage, and the oncoming vast processes of reconstruction are collective evidence that the individual units concerned in these movements are sacrificing to Principle their false beliefs, the appetites, passions, and selfishness of the carnal mind, so that the spiritual idea, man in the image of God, may rule them and manifest to them the immortal harmony of real being. Out of the suffering of Armageddon, out of the hallowing self-sacrifice of the trenches, out of the universal sacrifice of material concepts and desires, a purer knowledge will be evolved of the "spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God," the sacrifice of obedience to Principle, in which the allness of God and the perfection of spiritual man are acknowledged and demonstrated. The understanding of God and spiritual man alone has power to destroy the carnal mind and the phenomena of sensuality, and to make the world fit for free men. "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed," said Jesus. "Truth," writes Mrs. Eddy on page 201 of Science and Health, "makes a new creature, in whom old things pass away and 'all things are become new.' Passions, selfishness, false appetites, hatred, fear, all sensuality, yield to spirituality, and the superabundance of being is on the side of God, good."
Christian Science Sentinel, September 7, 1918 |
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