Article March 27, 1909 Issue

"KNOW THYSELF."

J. MILES CHAMBERS, M.R.C.S., ENG.; L.R.C.P., LOND.

The valuable precept, "Know thyself," comes to us from the writings of one of the Greek philosophers. It was placed over the porch or entrance to one of the temples of ancient Greece, a witness to the fact that they, like we, sought for an answer to the question, "What must I do to be saved?"

Webster's Dictionary gives the definition of the verb "to know" as follows: "To perceive with certainty; to understand clearly; to have a clear and certain perception of truth, fact, or any thing that actually exists; e.g., we know that truth and falsehood express ideas incompatible with each other." Juvenal writes (Satires, xi. 27), "The precept, 'Know thyself,' is heaven-born;" and when it is considered in conjunction with the teaching of Christian Science, it is indeed the open door which no man can shut, a veritable entrance to the holy of holies. "Know thyself:" know that the true selfhood is spiritual, not material; that it is eternal, not temporal; that it is coexistent with God, the Lord and giver of life; that it is a son of the living God, joint heir with Christ; that it is free from the law of sin and death, and in this knowing human consciousness will pass from death unto life.

"In him [God] we live, and move, and have our being," said Paul; "for I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come; nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." And our Leader says, "He [man] has been forever in the eternal Mind, God" (Science and Health, p. 336). If this be true, if our conviction of the "hidden mysteries of God" is such that the life and ascension of the perfect Jesus have established this thought of the nature of man in consciousness as our inalienable birthright, we know that we may be guided in all our doings and relations by the one Mind, good. Knowing this, we may learn, by the exercise of our hitherto dormant faculty of spiritual perception, to live in the indescribable joy of realizing that right consciousness is sensitized to receive impressions only from light and love, that it is incapable of receiving or recording impressions of darkness or falsity.

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