Editorial October 8, 1921 Issue

The Victory of Experience

Gustavus S. Paine with contributions from Mary Blomfield

Through the practice of Christian Science one proves that, on the one hand, the real man has never fallen from perfection, and that, on the other hand, his true existence as spiritual idea has never developed by evolutionary stages or in any other way from protoplasmic matter. Why, then, is any process of improvement in human conditions even seemingly necessary? Stricktly speaking, there can be no improvement in actual, spiritual conditions, for the creation of the divine Mind, whether it be called man or the universe, is infinitely active because of its infinite source, and this infinite activity or unfoldment is and always has been the only living. The human sense of things is mere illusion, which vanishes for each one in proportion as he understands the omnipresence of genuine Life now. Forever the experience of this Life is the fact, which the counterfeit illusion never has touched for an instant. From any seeming experience one can learn, therefore, only the reality of spiritual Life, which has endured continuously and indestructibly despite all the vagaries of the falsity.

Thus Mrs. Eddy tells us on page 339 of "Miscellaneous Writings": "Experience is victor, never the vanquished; and out of defeat comes the secret of victory." When one recognizes that this is the truth, the suppositions of mortal mind have no terrors for him. He is fortified against even such an attack of evil suggestion as Bunyan records in "The Pilgrim's Progress" where we read: "Then Apollyon straddled himself quite over the whole breadth of the way, and said, I am void of fear in this matter. Prepare thyself to die; for I swear by my infernal den, that thou shalt go no farther: here will I spill thy soul." Apollyon is, of course, but a name for personified evil, suggesting itself as complete obstruction to progress and happiness. It is the supposition that life is in matter and can be destroyed by irresistible materiality. The man who knows that the only living of the real man always has been the expression of spiritual Life or Mind, which is the true substance, repulses perfectly any such suggestion that he is at the mercy of a den of evils.

That which a man accepts as substance determines his happiness, for if he accepts matter he is constantly subject to dramatic moments and hours of dire threatenings from mortal mind, similar to those which Bunyan depicts, whereas if he accepts Mind and knows that he lives in Mind he demonstrates that his real being is unassailable. Infinite Spirit, Mind, alone is real Soul, and is not in matter, but is expressed by the unlimited spiritual action which constitutes immortal man. The one Soul, infinite Life, cannot, of course, be destroyed or harmed. By understanding that all the actual doing there ever has been is the spiritual manifestation of this infinite Soul, which is genuine substance, a man can go forward unafraid. He proves the possession of this through demonstrating that spiritual experience has all the while been the reality, even in the midst of mortal mind's supposition that its belief in matter could be either pleasurable or painful. It is demonstration of divine Principle to rejoice that Life is.

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