Article June 25, 1910 Issue

"FORGETTING THOSE THINGS WHICH ARE BEHIND."

EDITH C. CARTER.

St. Paul's profound knowledge of human nature is shown in many of his utterances, and, when viewed in the light of Christian Science, the phrase quoted above is one of his most remarkable and inclusive. The words occur in the epistle to the Philippians, in which St. Paul, with the love and humility resulting from persistent striving after good, reveals to the church at Philippi something of his methods of work.

In order to get a glimpse of what the thought here expressed may include for us, we must try to realize what this "forgetting" meant for the apostle himself. "A Pharisee, and the son of a Pharisee," well born, well educated, thoroughly grounded in the teachings of the Hebrew faith and keenly interested in his religion, he had to put behind him all the traditions, pride, aloofness of his race, and to rid himself of that innate reverence for forms and ceremonies which had hitherto seemed to form part of his being. Doubtless his adoption of Christianity also meant the severance of family ties and the sacrifice of position, possessions, and worldly ambition. Every consideration that, up to the time of his journey to Damascus, had seemed of supreme importance in life, had to yield to the spiritual illumination which showed these things in their true light. In addition to this, he had to free himself from the self-reproach which, as we gather from his epistles, frequently intruded itself upon him in connection with his bitter persecution of the Christians previous to his conversion. Recognizing the necessity for the complete obliteration of thoughts such as these, the apostle begins his description of the steps essential to progress with the words, "Forgetting those things which are behind."

Every student of Christian Science must some time awake to the necessity for this forgetting, and attain to a certain understanding of what it means. It means giving up one's former cherished ideals of goodness, happiness, success, etc., and replacing them with ideals which may entail a total change of method and aim. It includes the active desire to understand that there is not in truth, and never has been, a past filled with the belief of fears, sorrows, mistakes, and failures, and requires the individual appropriation of the fact that memory is only the everpresent consciousness of good. It also requires us to free ourselves from the half contemptuous credence we have hitherto given to trivial superstitions, and to offer a determined resistance to the temptation to allow time-honored false beliefs and misconceptions to clog that activity which leads to expansion of thought and spiritual understanding. Only as we are obedient to the above requirements shall we be at liberty to grasp those spiritual realities which will satisfy, with unvarying certainty, every aspiration of our purified sense.

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