Article January 31, 1901 Issue

The Way of Escape

BY GRACE STEPHENS WRIGHT.

What a wealth of helpful suggestion there is in many sentences of the Old Testament if we allow them to lie in our minds and unfold to us! I find that it is only by dwelling upon a sentence at a time for weeks perhaps that a hidden meaning is revealed and becomes a practical help.

Several weeks ago I read Genesis, 19 :17:"Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed," and the thoughts have been coming one by one to make it of value to me. One definition of escape is "to get free from that which confines your life." Now in Christian Science we know that mortal beliefs are the only things that confine us, that keep us from knowing Life as God, that without them—beliefs of fear, of prejudice, of unkind criticism, of sensitiveness which is selfishness, of irritability, of unwillingness to do our duty and the legion of other beliefs—we should realize harmony or Heaven here and now.

How often we have tried to get rid of these faults by agonizing to break through them as if they were a plaster cast tight about us; our feelings have been many in our efforts to dispossess ourselves of our unpleasant characteristics—pent up, grimly determined, wilful, hopeful, and discouraged by turns. But the derivation of the word escape brings out the Christianly Scientific way to free ourselves from these mortal beliefs. Escape is from the Latin ex, out of, and cappa, A cape or cloak, so to escape is to slip out of one's cape or cloak. Now do these faults not cover our real selves as a cape rather than as a cast, and is it not easier and wiser to slip out of them by applying Jesus' rule of Love than to try to break them by hitting them in one place and whacking them in another? I have tried in some cases the latter method, but have ended in weariness and discouragement. Then I have let go all the feelings that seemed to be in my heart. as it were, have "slipped out of my cape," by letting Love take possession and thereby have proved the truth of our Leader's statement in "Science and health with Key to the Scriptures," p. 97: "The way to extract error from mortal mind is to pour in Truth through floodtides of Love," and the result has been a calm in place of the tension of mind, joy and peace instead of anxious effort.

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