Editorial January 23, 1909 Issue

HABIT

Annie M. Knott

We are all familiar with the expression, "force of habit," though we may not have thought much regarding its significance. The dictionaries define habit as "a tendency or inclination toward an action or condition, which by repetition has become easy, spontaneous, or even unconscious; in theology, tendency or trend." Strangely enough, the word habit has come to be more generally associated with evil than with good, which is an amplification of the mistaken belief that it is easier to do wrong than to do right. All this points to another fundamental error, namely, that although God is Spirit, man, whom the Bible declares to be His image and likeness, is material. The history of mortal man shows that his tendencies are evil, and St. Paul refers to this in saying, "When I would do good, evil is present with me;" but he also points the way to deliverance from this deplorable condition when he says, in that famous 8th chapter of Romans. "That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."

We find, both in the study of the Bible and in human experience, that the fetters of evil habits are never really broken except as the individual's thought is to some extent spiritualized, and that entire freedom can only come through entire spiritualization; yet this is surely a prize worth striving for. In Science and Health (p. 62), Mrs. Eddy says, "The entire education of children should be such as to form habits of obedience to the moral and spiritual law, with which the child can meet and master the belief in so-called physical laws, a belief which breeds disease." In another place she tells us that the understanding of the truth "makes the nerves, bones, brain, etc., servants, instead of masters" (Ibid., p. 216).

Now we often hear complaints that the nerves, etc., are very disobedient to their owners' wishes, but said owners do not see that these disobedient habits began, possibly, in infancy and continued with the years; that these were not merely habits of disobedience to parental authority, but of disobedience to God's spiritual law, and that without obedience to this law there can be no true basis of health, happiness, or prosperity. Happily for humanity, Christian Science has come to show the naturalness and permanence of good habits, as concerns both mind and body. A great deal is being said at the present time respecting the sense of exhilaration experienced by those who ascend in balloons, but although many of us may not have this particular privilege, one much greater is within our reach. We can daily realize the exhilaration of rising above the downward tendencies of disease and sin, and breathing the pure air above the mists of materiality.

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