Article October 1, 1910 Issue

A positive goal

Clarence W. Chadwick

Christianity has no uncertain meaning for him who has caught the true tone of the Christ-idea in human consciousness. He no longer thinks of it as a vain sentimentalism or as a religious philosophy suitable only for the unpractical and weak-minded. In Christian Science he has found the one and only living God, and man’s true relationship to Him to be a divine certainty. A definite goal now confronts him, the realization of the perfection of being, and as never before he finds himself actively engaged in putting off the old man of sense and putting on the new man of Soul. He finds no uncertain significance attached to this regenerative work. On the contrary, it seems so comprehensive and peremptory that he marvels that he should not sooner have been healed of the mental and moral darkness which had for years blinded him to the truth of man’s being in Science.

A new ideal, a new thought-model, now absorbs his attention; and it is certainly no meaningless vagary of belief to him, for he sees in it the ultimate conquest over all that would separate him from the spiritual perfection of his being. This ideal of life teaches him how to seek the good and how to find it, how to love and how to be loved, how to live and how to let live; in fine, it teaches him how to work out his own salvation, which involves the all-important factor of watching his own thinking. This means that he has entered the arena of right thought, and that a true sense of peace and happiness has begun to be realized. He no longer finds satisfaction in metally meddling with other people’s affairs, because he knows it to be contrary to the divine law and order. He now knows that salvation is for all mankind, which makes the welfare of his neighbor identical with his own. He has found that the best way to help his neighbor is to be right himself with God by maintaining mentally man’s true relationship to his Maker.

Through the positive proof of healing he knows what his mental attitude should be at all times. If doubt or fear ever suggest themselves, he finds his haven of rest in the recognition that “the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.” He is never at a loss to know what thought to hold, since God is the infinite ever-present Mind from whom right thoughts are constantly passing to man. A positive goal is always before his mental vision, and he can say with the psalmist: “I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.” Best of all, he is learning to give power to thought. Why should he not do so, when he finds out that God clothes his own thoughts with omnipotence and makes them intelligently and lawfully operative to correct and to annul all wrong thinking?

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