Article December 24, 1910 Issue

GLORIFYING GOD

BLANCHE HERSEY HOGUE.

The student of Christian Science, if he is honest, has before him one definite task: his single aim must be to glorify God. Perhaps a reason not altogether unselfish has brought him to Christian Science, or some motive not wholly sincere may perhaps be animating his present attempts to apply Christian Science to his needs and to his desires; but, because Christian Science is what it is,—because the whole nature of its teaching, when correctly applied, destroys all self-seeking,—every student must come soon or late to the singleness of purpose which is bent upon bearing witness to God's presence and power and to His goodness to "the children of men."

Not easily nor at once, perhaps, is this spiritual altitude reached. Mortals have so long and so persistently lived to satisfy themselves, that living purposely and definitely to glorify God is a new and an untried thing to them. The whole mortal self must be regenerated in order to live first for God, and the selfish or the worldly tendency in each one of us does not yield readily to the pursuit of righteousness,—to right thinking and right living. Even worse, our materiality may try, in our first study of Christian Science, to bend the word of God toward the ends of personal ambition and gain.

Praying for the gratification of selfish desires is not outgrown with ease; but, because human thinking when directed by Christian Science lays hold of divine activities, the actual spiritual law thus enlisted in our behalf begins to dispel, beyond our own power to undo evil, the selfish instincts. Though we turn to Christian Science hoping to strengthen and brighten our ways, we soon find that what we learn of it is steadily purifying our ways and causing them to give place eventually to God's ways. Thus we find, in the course of spiritual growth, that Christian Science brings gladness to life not by gratifying the mortal, but by exalting God and Godlikeness; and that in this way it sets us about what the master Christian called "my Father's business,"—even the business of manifesting this Godlikeness in every thought and in every undertaking.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

"MEAT FOR STRONG MEN"