Article December 24, 1910 Issue

"OUR FATHER"

VIOLET KER SEYMER.

It is safe to say that a great number of those who turn to Christian Science for healing are in some way or other victims of the belief that there is a law of heredity; that is to say, they are considered to have inherited physical or moral defects from their progenitors. In Science and Health, however, we find this significant statement: "The foundation of mortal discord is a false sense of man's origin" (p. 262). In Christian Science healing is accomplished by the realization that God is the only creator and the only lawgiver, the infinite and only source of life, individuality, and constitution in their true sense. Jesus said: "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven." Strictly speaking, mortality is neither a parent nor an offspring, for no mortal has the power to originate or to transmit life, and it is evident that mindless matter cannot transmit sin or disease: therefore Christian Science reveals mortal mind, so called, as the aggressor and divine Mind as the liberator in every instance.

In support of the belief that God institutes or permits heredity along the line of material descent, people will often quote from the commandment: "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children." Memory is playing them false, however, if they forget that the conclusion reads: "unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments." Could it really be supposed that God is punishing hereditary hatred on the one side and rewarding inherited love and obedience on the other? Would not this imply that goodness, independently of personal effort, is guaranteed in some cases, whereas in others the burden of an evil legacy is unavoidable? The shame and despair this theory engenders are responsible for much of the suffering from which hundreds of individuals seek and find deliverance in Christian Science. The inner meaning of this commandment goes to show that hatred punishes itself wherever the belief is indulged, while goodness flows from God and is its own reward, and that relationships have nothing whatever to do with the question. When the understanding of divine Love as the perfect Principle of creation dawns upon sufferers, they make the discovery that man is a spiritual being governed by spiritual law, and they gain a better sense of what their true individuality includes and excludes. They begin to perceive the "measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ," and meanwhile experience a blessed relief from pain and the conflict of sin.

While the very general belief in the law of heredity is not to be accepted, there is indeed a true law of inheritance without which Christ Jesus could not have taught his followers in every age to pray "Our Father." These two simple words alone reveal a most glorious inheritance of purity, perfection, and immortality. As if to forestall the claim of presumption, Jesus still further emphasized the fact of men's true inheritance as his coheirs in the words: "I ascend unto my Father and your Father." When all Christians understand something of the scope and something of the requirements of these two words, "our Father," they will pronounce them joyfully, and forever renounce the supposititious inheritance of sin and disease. Having put their hand to the plow, they will not look back to past conditions, but resolutely cast out the old beliefs until not a seed of false sense remains to furnish a crop of weeds.

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