|
CSEC ON-LINE REFERENCE LIBRARY |
|
FROM THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
Only through spiritual sense are the realities of being discerned, and any man at any time may have recourse to spiritual sense through which to grasp eternal facts; for spiritual sense, being the intelligence of man in the likeness of God, is ever present and available. "Absorbed in material selfhood," Mrs. Eddy explains in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 91), "we discern and reflect but faintly the substance of Life or Mind. The denial of material selfhood aids the discernment of man's spiritual and eternal individuality, and destroys the erroneous knowledge gained from matter or through what are termed the material senses." It has been the belief in matter as a reality, and consequently in a material selfhood, that has moved the Cains from the beginning to murder the Abels and other Cains. To love another as one's self is a sanity that comes to a man only when he discovers and demonstrates his true individuality as a son of God; for in that discovery he finds that what is true of his own individuality is true also of every other individuality. He has found the divine Principle through which the good of one becomes the good of all. He loves the true individuality of others enough to strive to see it as the only reality, even in the midst of trying human circumstances, because he has first seen his own spiritual individuality as a son of God and loves its beauty and perfection sufficiently to consecrate his endeavors to the demonstration of it, to a realization which excludes the admission of evil anywhere. It was this knowledge of his true selfhood that inspired and enabled Jesus the Christ to devote himself to the service of good and the consequent overcoming of evil. "I know whence I came, and whither I go," he told the materialists; "but ye cannot tell whence I come, and whither I go. Ye judge after the flesh." To the man who is engrossed in materiality, and perhaps as a result is suffering from all manner of discords, the declaration that man is really and only spiritual may seem visionary. All his physical senses uphold his belief that spiritual being is anything but a present actuality; but it is this physical sense that holds him in the experience of discord. The material senses are ignorant of God and cannot be expected to perceive the reality of Spirit and spiritual harmony. Let a man begin to assert his spiritual individuality, however, and what happens? All the power of omnipotence substantiates his legitimate claim to sonship with God. "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit," Paul declared, "that we are the children of God." Upon even a human sense of life the immediate effect of thus claiming man's spiritual birthright is to bring this human sense under the rule of perfection and harmony as the natural state of man, and, therefore, to lessen the tyranny of materiality. "According to Christian Science," Mrs. Eddy writes in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 104), "perfection is normal, — not miraculous. Clothed, and in its right Mind, man's individuality is sinless, deathless, harmonious, eternal. His materiality, clad in a false mentality, wages feeble fight with his individuality, — his physical senses with his spiritual senses. The latter move in God's grooves of Science: the former revolve in their own orbits, and must stand the friction of false selfhood until self-destroyed." The emergence out of material into spiritual selfhood is a path not strewn with rose petals; it is an advance opposed at every point by all the contending emotions and passions of material sense. If the way seems uninviting because of the certain struggle, and a mortal elects on that account to traverse the broad road of materiality rather than to wage warfare against false selfhood, he will eventually find, just the same, that material selfhood, being unreal, is bound to disappear; and he will find that its disappearance through temporary indulgence, resultant suffering, and final self-destruction, is a bitterness incomparably greater than the earlier struggle to conquer materiality through the voluntary and intelligently persistent endeavor to obey divine Principle. In his submission to materiality, a man has no remedy for his difficulties, but greater potions of materiality. The man who is struggling to obey divine Principle knows that he cannot conquer false selfhood without divine aid, and so, in his effort to overcome it, he throws himself more unreservedly upon Principle, gains a better understanding of it, and therefore approaches, even in his struggle, nearer to his true individuality as a son of God. In the recognition and demonstration of spiritual individuality as a reflection of God, the law of perfection is brought to bear upon every conceivable human affair and situation. Evil in one's self or in another is to be denied reality, because it manifests an unreal carnal mind. It must be viewed in this way for the reason that, in his practice of the Science of Mind, which establishes the perfection of spiritual man, a man cannot consistently in any way attribute power or identity to evil; for by so doing he holds within his own consciousness something contrary and obstructive to his own spiritual individuality. In proportion as thought is held to this perfect rule, evil will lose its seeming power and identification, and the essence of brotherhood, which is simply the unity of spiritual individuality, will be demonstrated. In Miscellany (p. 160) Mrs. Eddy writes, "To live so as to keep human consciousness in constant relation with the divine, the spiritual, and the eternal, is to individualize infinite power; and this is Christian Science."
The Christian Science Monitor, December 17, 1919 Christian Science Sentinel, March 6, 1920 |
Copyright
© 1996-2010 CSEC