Article May 23, 1903 Issue

Overcoming

ARCHIBALD WINNE.

GOD is love, God is good, God is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, so say the Scriptures. If this be true it would seem as if man reflecting God would reflect all goodness now, and that the prayer to be better would be unnecessary. We fail to see this perfect man because, through ignorance, "mortal man seems to himself to be material substance," when in reality "man is 'image'" (Science and Health, p. 301).

Jesus taught and demonstrated that it was necessary to overcome a belief like this before we could understand and enjoy the reward of this experience. The overcoming of evil was the cup he drank. So in our own experience must we meet and destroy not only our material thoughts and besetting sins, but all evils, whenever, and in whatever form they may appear. "Is the sick man sinful above all others? No! but so far as he is discordant, he is not the idea of God" (Science and Health, p. 318). Therefore sickness is a part of the error which draws man away from harmony, as surely as is the seeming pleasure of the drunkard which leads him into continuous unhappiness. In either event, our constant experience necessitates a prevention of such temptations by overcoming them in the knowledge and understanding that, "as God is substance and man is the offspring of substance,—being made in the Divine image and likeness,—man should wish for, and in reality has, the substance of Good, the substance of Spirit, not matter" (Science and Health, p. 301). Our work does not cease with demonstrating the nothingness of the disease that first turned our attention to the truth as taught in Christian Science, but is that constant, daily, working out of the problem of life, to which divine Love impels us when we turn from ourselves and seek Him.

To "'work out your own salvation,'" Mrs. Eddy tells us in Science and Health, p. 22, "is the demand of Life and Love." This is the "overcoming" in our individual experiences by which finally, "when the smoke of battle clears away, you will discern the good you have done, and receive according to your deserving" (Science and Health, p. 22).

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May 23, 1903
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