Purity

Any person who has ever thought deeply over the meaning of Christian Science must have seen how fundamentally the question of purity enters into it. The old proverb, "To the pure all things are pure," describes exactly the condition of Principle. Principle is that, necessarily, which knows nothing unlike itself. The saying of James that no fountain can bring forth sweet water and bitter exemplifies this exactly. Principle, simply because it is Principle, can know nothing of anything outside Principle. The innocence of the child, which departs with increasing years, the ingenuousness of the adult, which may be imposed upon, are relative conditions of human purity. The purity of Principle is different from these in that it is an absolute fact any denial of which is a purely supposititious claim. It is because of this, surely, that Mrs. Eddy has written, on page 241 of Science and Health, "One's aim, a point beyond faith, should be to find the footsteps of Truth, the way to health and holiness. We should strive to reach the Horeb height where God is revealed; and the corner-stone of all spiritual building is purity." This is necessarily so if purity is the absolute scientific fact, for then all building based on impurity, or befouled with it, is of the nature of the house built upon the sand. That is to say, its ultimate destruction is inevitable.

All this tends to explain the full force of the Commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." The word adultery is, of course, capable of a far broader meaning than any physical impurity. It covers the whole denial of Truth. Every separate effort either to counterfeit or to weaken the truth, in any way, is merely a phase of this adulteration. A man who looks upon a woman to lust after her in his heart, equally with a man who would water down facts to suit his own convenience, is guilty of adultery. That is why absolute adherence to Principle is so imperative in the demonstration of Christian Science. "Only through radical reliance on Truth," Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 167of Science and Health, "can scientific healing power be realized." To make a demonstration of Christian Science, it is necessary to be entirely convinced of your own argument. The man, consequently, who believes in the pleasure of sensuality, in any form, can scarcely succeed in convincing himself that there is no sensation or pleasure in matter. Any argument he may attempt to build on such a basis has, necessarily, its foundations in the sand, and cannot possibly stand against the mental suggestions which flood the human mind in denial of the proposition.

The whole of Christian Science demonstration lies in the ability of the individual to destroy the hypnotic suggestion of the reality of matter. If, therefore, there is any mental yielding to a belief in the power of matter to confer pleasure, the suggestion has already done its work, and the possibility of demonstration has been weakened until the suggestion has been met and mastered. This does not mean that demonstration is impossible until the lusts of the flesh have been entirely overcome, but it does mean that so long as these lusts are deliberately yielded to in practice, and only denied in theory, the assertion of the infinity of Principle has been adulterated with the admission of the reality of matter, with the result that the effort to prove the nothingness of matter is seriously handicapped. "Good must dominate in the thoughts of the healer," Mrs. Eddy says, on page 446 of Science and Health, "or his demonstration is protracted, dangerous, and impossible in Science. A wrong motive involves defeat. In the Science of Mind-healing, it is imperative to be honest, for victory rests on the side of immutable right."