Article March 25, 1911 Issue

STEPS OF PROGRESS

GRACE SQUIRES.

The chastening influence of self-knowledge through which the loyal Scientist passes is a searching period, attended with surprising discoveries, bare-faced and humiliating. For the first time in his life he recognizes a fact for a fact, and ceases to juggle with it. His impurities, his quick resentments, his dominating selfishness over weaker members of his household, his envy of his neighbor's goods, and his emulating desire to amass much of the same, and the persistent subtlety of "self" which colors his every move,—all these rise to the surface of a consciousness made turbulent by Truth, there to find no hiding-place.

One by one he deals with these errors of mortal mind, gaining strength from each conflict and victory, and gaining equally the peace of God, which passeth all human understanding. His progression is sure and uplifting. His watchfulness becomes daily more absorbing and more strengthening from this inward field of labor, and his powers as a thought anatomist are expert.

Having traveled so far safely on his own mental journey, it becomes necessary for him in the inevitable law of progress to become instructed in certain reactionary effects of the so-called evil thoughts of others. He should realize from his own experience that the perception of any evil does not make that evil more operative, but distinctly less so, since our Leader instructs us that evil "found out, is two-thirds destroyed" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 210); where, in his ignorance, he had three thirds to battle with, in his enlightenment he has not even one third, since, as Mrs. Eddy adds, this "kills itself."

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