Article April 23, 1910 Issue

THE NEED OF UNDERSTANDING

CLARENCE W. CHADWICK.

It requires very little effort for a mortal to say, "I believe." In fact it is about the only thing he can do. He can say that he believes in God, and yet know absolutely nothing of the Supreme Being. He can say that he believes in Christ Jesus as the Saviour of the world, and yet have no adequate or scientific comprehension of Christ, Truth. He can say that he believes that God is Love, and yet fall far short of loving his neighbor as himself. He can say that he believes that God is all powerful, and yet in the same breath acknowledge another power called evil. He can even go so far as to say that he believe in Christian Science, and yet know little or nothing of what it really is. Worst of all, he believes that he can believe his way into the kingdom of heaven, and yet have no disposition to correct or change his present mode of thinking and living. From beginning to end his existence is merely a belief existence. He admits that he is endowed with five physical senses which cannot give him any reliable information concerning God, and yet he clings to these so-called senses with a determination to believe what they tell him. This leaves him in the domain of fear, anxiety, worry, suspicion, doubt, superstition, mysticism, and ignorance.

Finally, through the pangs of discontent and unhappiness, a change takes place. Christ, Truth, knocks at the door of consciousness and calls in unmistakable tones, "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." For the first time he begins to grasp the true purport of self-denial and to put off the old man. The fallacy of blind belief appeals to him from a new and unexpected standpoint. He now sees the need of understanding, and he begins to cultivate that higher or spiritual sense which alone can lead him into the knowledge or understanding of God and His perfect spiritual creation. He learns to see and grasp things that other people do not see, in that he is looking more deeply into the realm of spiritual reality, where ideas are found to be substantial, tangible, and practical. Where others are conscious only of confusion and suffering, he is experiencing a measure of peace and comfort, because he is able to look beyond the outward or fleeting sense of things into the perfection of being.

Here it is that he finds the true idea of God and man and discards the carnal or material sense of things. He looks into Mind and finds health apart from matter, and ever afterward he discards material remedies, knowing that infinite Spirit never intended or provided them for human use. However tenaciously others may hold to materia medica and insistently urge him to yield to its decree, he now knows that the same serpent which talked to Adam and Eve is suggesting to him the efficacy and use of material remedies, and he accordingly places the suggestion where it belongs. Men and women of admitted ordinary common sense, friends and foes alike, rise up on all sides to call him foolish and even "crazy," if he elects to discard the god of medicine. He is, they think, deliberately refusing to do anything for himself, unless he rejects spiritual means and clings to inanimate matter for help! Such is the dictum of the unenlightened human mind that has failed to grasp the meaning of the Scripture which declares that God created "every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew."

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