Article November 16, 1968 Issue

No Past to Regret

OLIVE THOMPSON

Material reasoning would have us believe that nothing can be done about the heedless word already spoken, the inadvertent deed done, or the kindness left undone. On the contrary, Christian Science is entirely relevant to everyday problems, including the problem of regret for the recent or the distant past. Mrs. Eddy makes this unqualified statement: "Man's spiritual individuality is never wrong."^{Science and Health, p. 491;} The realization, in some degree, of what comprises "man's spiritual individuality" renders mistakes less likely to occur in our experience. Even more comforting, perhaps, is the fact that such a realization can bring healing and a right solution even when a mistake has been made.

Indeed, such healing is not only possible but necessary if we are to advance further in our understanding of Christian Science. The suggestion that it was too late to correct an earlier, still remembered discord was answered at different times in the writer's experience by a sentence of Mrs. Eddy's, "Science must go over the whole ground, and dig up every seed of error's sowing."^{p. 79;}

Christian Science does not invite us to cling to the past or to rehearse its errors perpetually. Rather it calls on us to expose and destroy every lingering regret concerning it on the basis that to the all-knowing Mind nothing outside its own infinite goodness has ever occurred or come into being. It assures us that it is never too late to replace a wrong concept with the true one.

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