The Transcendentalism of Christian Science SUE HARPER MIMS, CSD          Perhaps no term in the English language has been more misapplied than the word transcendental. The hour has come for its true meaning and value to be revealed, for its rescue from the false sense that it applies to what is visionary, unreal, and impracticable. The human mind today is awakening through Christian Science from its grosser materialism, and, passing from the finite towards the infinite, is reaching out for higher definitions.          In her broad grasp of things, our Leader gives due credit to the labors of philosophers as well as physicists in their work of enlarging the human mind and breaking its limitations. Throughout the centuries what has been called transcendentalism has rarefied human thought, for it brought glorious glimpses of a spiritual reality; but not reaching conviction and not understanding Mind as the only causation and power, it was shorn of practical value to humanity. Mrs. Eddy, by her spiritual discovery of the Science of Mind, has gathered the illumination of all the ages into one grand sunburst of light, and just as physical science has utilized the electrical forces to dispel material darkness, so Christian Science, in its pure and logical statement that infinite Spirit manifests itself in its own perfect likeness, in spiritual ideas, is dispelling the mists and myths of mortal thought, and thus reducing to nothingness the illusions of discord and disease and bringing to light Life and immortality. Christian Science is Christianity. It is redemptive, not destructive; it restores the true sense of all things.          The dictionaries furnish the following definitions of "transcendental": "Of very high degree; transcending all ordinary or specified bounds;" "Transcendental truths are simply those necessary, self-evident, axiomatic truths which transcend experience." "The character of transcendental excellence. A word used in Shelling's explanation of the universe and material things to indicate a mode of mental conception." Dr. Channing says, "Transcendentalism as viewed by Jesus' disciples was a pilgrimage from the idolatrous world of creeds and rituals to the temple of the living God in the Soul."          The foundation-stone of the Christian religion is faith — a conviction of the unseen realities of being, transcending the seen, or temporal as defined by Paul in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. We see here what Mrs. Eddy has also revealed as God's gracious gift to the world today, — the power of this mental conviction, — for the apostle tells us in this same chapter that this conviction of unseen realities, as Canon Farrar and John Wesley translate the phrase, "evidence of things not seen," heals the sick, raises the dead, stops the mouths of lions, quenches the violence of fire, etc., thus transcending ordinary experience. This is the purpose and mission of Christ Jesus and of Christianity, and Mrs. Eddy is pointing the way and leading Christians to both see and utilize their God-given prerogatives. This opens to us the realm of the real, wherein the divine power of scientific thought transcends all human limitations, healing sickness, sin, and death, destroying the "power of darkness," and translating "us into the kingdom of His dear Son," spiritual sonship to God.          Jesus' transcendentalism was frequently expressed in most startling statements; so startling, indeed, as to stir the carnal mind to its utmost limit of cruelty and hatred, in spite of the beneficent works that followed in the train of his positive statements which were so far beyond the human sense of things. "Before Abraham was, I am." "O Father, glorify thou me . . . with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven," statements which find their magnificent correlatives in the teachings of our textbook. (See Science and Health, pp. 302, 63 to 65.)          From these sayings we see that Jesus was the greatest transcendentalist of all ages, none had so clear a conviction as he of the unseen perfection of being. In his consciousness, the abiding sense of the eternal reality of God and His spiritual universe, including man, destroyed the false sense that aught else could be, therefore his transcendentalism, wherein the ideal was the only real, became the "power of God unto salvation." To be a true Christian transcendentalist is to have such an abiding conviction of the power and presence of infinite Spirit, that our very mental atmosphere shall radiate healing and inspiration as spontaneously as a rose exhales its fragrance or the sun emits its light.          A preparation of the heart, a devoted purpose, a true aim to attain to Christian perfection, to bring every wish and desire into obedience to Christ, must be the steady, conscientious aspiration and work of all who enter this path of light, for the way is narrow and the ascent steep that leads to the power and glory of Jesus' practical transcendentalism. Mrs. Eddy has opened our eyes to see the spiritual chart outlined for us by Jesus. She is exploring the way, and her inspired writings are a complete manual for the utilization, the daily application of true transcendentalism which brings heaven to earth.          "If ye abide in me" — in the spiritual sense of omnipotent, ever-present Love, health, harmony — "ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." This is the true transcendentalism — the avenue of that mortal and spiritual force which must subdue all error and evil. We thus recognize and attain to man's true individuality, and see with the poet that, —          Not in entire forgetfulness,          And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory, do we come          From God, who is our home.   "The Transcendentalism of Christian Science" by Sue Harper Mims, CSD The Christian Science Journal, March, 1905

 

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