Editorial January 28, 1905 Issue

The Gain of "Giving Up"

John B. Willis

A Revelation of truth is always indicated when the religious terms with which we are familiar come to have a more spiritual, more practical, more inspiring significance, and the application of this simple test brings satisfying assurance to every faithful student of Christian Science that this is indeed a divine light which has been thrown upon the erstwhile obscure pathways and problems of human life.

One of the multiplied subjects which have thus been made more luminous and intelligible for Christian Scientists is that of sacrifice, self-surrender for Christ and for humanity. Religion has always been associated with the thought of necessity for the giving up, not only of those things which are out of keeping with a high ideal, but of many others which have been thought of as good in themselves and which have yielded a degree at least of innocent pleasure and satisfaction. This idea has found its extreme emphasis in asceticism, to some form of which unnumbered heroic souls have ever been devoted. To-day, however, the dominant religious thought is far removed from the mediæval idea of sacrifice, and a great many Christian people are verging upon the world's contented indifference respecting the whole matter.

At such an hour Christian Science has come with illuminating teaching that the indissoluble union between Principle and its idea, God and the true man, makes unfailing provision for his every need. He is linked to infinite good, and therefore the acquirement of the "riches of his inheritance in Christ Jesus" is but an awakening, not to what shall be, but to what is. Thus for the true man there is no possible "giving up" of any real good, since all things are eternally his by virtue of his relation to the source of being. His every reflection of good can but increase his own store; for everything he gives. Like the diamond, his worth is but magnified by the splendors of his radiation.

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