Article March 26, 1910 Issue

HALF MEASURE AND FULL MEASURE

COL. W. E. FELL.

It would seem that the chief difficulty with which the young student of Christian Science has to contend is his inability to accept the fact that the whole of material existence is a falsity, something in the nature of a dream. Those things which most strongly appeal to mortals in their better moods, he prefers to consider as a part of the realm of the real; that is, he makes reservations in favor of the appearances which physical sense asserts to be good or beautiful. The baneful, the injurious, the criminal, he willingly relegates to the realm of the unreal, failing to see that, so long as he permits himself to discriminate between the pleasant and unpleasant phases of materialism, he is clinging to and tilling a soil into which the seeds of sin, sickness, disease, and death may fall and fructify.

Christian Science teaches that the supposititious mentality called mortal mind, which is ever at enmity with God (according to St. Paul), embodies its own thoughts and calls them material things. Ignorant of itself, and of what it is doing, it fears these false creations or falls down in abject worship before them, indiscriminately attributing their origin to God or to the devil. Ignorant of itself, ignorant of the fictitious nature of these manifested beliefs, ignorant of its own action and reaction, trusting nothing but the false evidence of the physical senses, deceived and deceiving, verily this mortal or carnal mind is ripe for destruction; and this welcome destruction of its tired and tortured selfhood must come when consciousness is prepared to contemplate perfect manhood, the Christ-idea, and to refuse all government but that of divine Mind. Let consciousness of the one Mind humble mortal, material selfhood out of existence; then shall the meek inherit the earth,—have dominion over every material condition.

When Christ Jesus rent the veil of materialism from top to bottom, the dragon received a deadly wound; but through the unfaithfulness of men to divine Principle and to the spiritual ideal, the dragon's "deadly wound" was healed. Spirit, however, was not dead, nor could the spiritual ideal be absent, or at any time less than perfect. One willing, waiting ear, attuned to the voice of Spirit, heard again the soft whisperings of Truth and Love, and this patient, tireless watcher has given to a sick and sinful world the import of that message, for which we are grateful.

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