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."

But through some error of mortal mind, this new knowledge is sometimes accepted with surprised disturbance, and all his own inharmonies suddenly become to him the property and directed effect of others' thoughts. His humble self-correction ceases, and with much of the quality that is exemplified throughout human life in the discovery of the distant mote instead of the self-evident beam, he is tempted to turn his thoughts to others, instead of to himself.

Disaster can but follow this course. His peace is gone. His sweet and uplifting faith seems a thing of the past. The more he loses it, the more he fears, till his fears become convictions, and the "great red dragon" is to him a mighty and indisputable reality. It absorbs all his mental efforts; the burden of evil in all its bewildering phases is charged to another, and his own healthful and corrective self-knowledge recedes to the vanishing-point. He forgets that if a man believes the earth is flat, that belief concerns him and not the earth. If he could see this, he should see with equal clearness that his present belief concerns himself, that it rests with him to maintain man's divinely bestowed right of "self-government" (Science and Health, p. 106), and doing this he need not fear the belief in evil perpetrators.

Mrs. Eddy tells us that we have but one enemy, and that enemy is our belief that we have one (Ibid., p. 10), the human ignorance that accepts what it senses instead of reaching beyond itself into spiritual knowledge. That the senses say that the evil of one can be transferred to hurt another no more makes it so than to say that hate is true He who has exchanged his hate for love, disbelieves in the evidence of hate, and he must learn equally that love cannot manifest itself in any malicious purpose.

Starting from this clear and positive base, the young Scientist will no longer be deflected in his mental efforts to the exclusion of chastening self-probing, but will increasingly know that his ignorance is but a belief, and is to be handled as any other of his errors. He will give it neither more nor less attention than he has given other lies in his consciousness, but will handle it fearlessly and pass on to other defects in his mental household. No progress is made by one-sided effort, and self-knowledge is not thus attained, nor is it a primary grade from which one graduates at an early date. The necessity for patient self-knowledge lasts so long as mortal mind lasts, so long as one bubble of false belief remains to be pricked.

Realizing that his ability to oust any enemy depends absolutely on his reflection of spiritual power, since our weapons "are not carnal, but mighty through God," he will take daily pains to promote the unfoldment of good and to allow no hectic and confusing fears to deflect this view-point. This persistent detection and correction of his own faults, this steadfast determination to cast out all that is unlike the divine idea, cannot fail to harmonize his mental efforts and reinstate him in peace and progress. He will at the same time remember Paul's injunction: "Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against all the wiles of the devil."

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

NO SEPARATION IN TRUTH

March 25, 1911

Contents

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit