Article July 13, 1912 Issue

IMPERSONAL DISCERNMENT

JOHN D. FRANCE.

Mrs. Eddy says, "To impersonalize scientifically the material sense of existence—rather than cling to personality—is the lesson of today" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 310). To the writer it seems that there are three distinct steps to be taken in reaching the height of understanding and realization to which this statement points, the attainment of which would prove to be the consummation of the highest human hope, namely, permanent health, peace, and happiness.

The first step is the awakening of human consciousness to the truth of being, in which God is recognized as all-inclusive good, not having a finite or anthropomorphic personality, but an infinite spiritual personality. The impersonalization of good thus begets a nobler, richer concept of it, while the impersonalization of evil, the devil, reduces it to nothingness; it exists only in the evil thinking of mortals. In this step, as in those following, the letter is more readily grasped than the spirit, possibly because the long-established belief in an anthropomorphic God is so frequently suggested by the use of a personal pronoun in referring to Deity. Evidently the only remedy lies in closely following the teachings of our text-book, with its illumined concept of God as the Principle of good, governing the universe.

The second step is golden with promise, since when taken it enables one to put "all things under his feet." It is the escape from self-consciousness, the feeling that "I" have done, am doing, or may do good or evil or both. It is to see the good as evidence of God, working in human consciousness and destroying the belief in evil, with the realization that it has no part in man's true being, since God is All. Pride of place and power, pride in our own ability and understanding,—these are a few of the thoughts which tempt us to locate good in the human personality and rack us with all their evil following of envy, selfishness, deceit, and the like. The thing which seems to have excited the resentment of mortals toward Jesus was his impersonalization of good. The Pharisees said, "For a good work we stone thee not;" but "because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God." It is evident that had he claimed some power of his own, he would have excited only the wonder which hypnotism produces today. The fact that the demonstrations of Christian Science are attributed to divine power, seems to arouse the same resentment which the Master's teaching awakened.

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