CSEC LIBRARY -- Worldly Pleasures

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Worldly Pleasures
ANNIE M. KNOTT, CSD

  There is a wide difference of opinion among professed Christians as to the extent in which they should indulge the desire for the pleasures of the senses, some sects prohibiting certain forms of amusement altogether, and others permitting them, except at specified seasons. It has, however, been noticeable that to the awakened conscience all such indulgence seems hazardous, and so, many have sought safety in asceticism, from the feeling that the temptation to worldly pleasure of any sort can be best avoided by severe self-discipline. It is, nevertheless, the experience of the many, who are healed in Christian Science that the things of sense, one after another, cease to allure, as spiritual realities are recognized and begin to take their rightful place in human consciousness. The unreality of evil is soon admitted, and its false manifestations are seen to be but shadows which are pierced by the keen rays of "the Sun of righteousness."

   How inspiring it is to hear a man tell of his emancipation in Christian Science from the awful bondage of belief in the pleasure and power of sin in all its forms. Perhaps the drink habit was the first to yield to the action of the truth. This chain had been willingly assumed at the start, through the belief that there was pleasure in it, and later came the belief that it had power to resist the utmost efforts of the human will, even when backed up by drugs and prayers. Our revered Leader says that "the pains of sinful sense are less harmful than its pleasures;" then she adds, "Belief in material suffering causes mortals to retreat from their error, to flee from body to Spirit, and to appeal to divine sources outside of themselves" (Science and Health, p. 405). It is by doing this that freedom is gained, and as the erstwhile bondsman of sense looks up to the heights of Soul, whence cometh his aid, he rejoices to know that
A man's a man for a' that.
   The question of indulgence in worldly pleasure is, in its final analysis, a very simple one, and the difficulties in the way of deciding it would be greatly lessened if each one aimed to arrive at the truth for himself, whatever the cost, and left others free to decide for themselves as spiritual illumination came to them. Of old the children of Israel were commanded to abstain from all the practices of the nations who were "cast out" because of their evil ways; "for thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God," was their leader's word. The Egyptians who had so long held them in cruel bondage were a pleasure-loving people, but we find this significant statement concerning them: "The Lord . . . will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which thou knowest, upon thee" (that is, if the Israelites obeyed the law of righteousness). Unhappily, they did fall into many of the evil ways of their predecessors, — the sins of luxury, pride, and worldly pleasure, — with a result that is known to us all.

   Their lesson is ours today. We have only to ask ourselves what the pursuit of pleasure has done for its votaries in any land or any age (especially when this has led to the violation of the Sabbath and the neglect of other uplifting influences), and we shall have our answer from the pages of history. Mrs. Eddy tells us that "Truth will at length compel us all to exchange the pleasures and pains of sense for the joys of Soul" (Science and Health, p. 390), and these joys are as eternal as their divine source! Like the living water of which Jesus spoke, they are within man's spiritual consciousness, and spring up perpetually. A glimpse of the blue sky, a glance into the ocean's depths, "the meanest flower that blows" (to quote Wordsworth), the healing of a single case of suffering by divine power, — these may all tell us of the heights and depths of infinite Love and awaken the joy that never grows weary. No one can charge Christian Science with being a religion of gloom, but like the Hebrew lawgiver it says, "Take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen," and so miss the real pleasures which are at God's right hand "for ever more."

"Worldly Pleasures" by Annie M. Knott, CSD
Christian Science Sentinel, July 9, 1910

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