Article May 6, 1911 ISSUE

INDIVIDUAL APPROPRIATION

VIOLET KER SEYMER

The injunction in Hebrews, that we "lay hold upon the hope set before us," implies the necessity for mentally grasping, appropriating, and applying those blessings which the one Spirit is constantly revealing to the pure in heart and to the needy. While revelation itself is divine, the appropriation of it must needs be humanly individual and constantly progressive. In the early centuries of the Christian era, wonders were wrought in the name of God through His enlightened witnesses. Later on, notwithstanding the fact that Truth had lost none of its potency, the works diminished because the individual appropriation of spiritual facts had practically given way to materialism and ecclesiasticism. The reason and the remedy for this falling-off is indicated in the experience of Christian Scientists, who one and all find, sooner or later, that each must work out his own salvation and exchange an attitude of passive acceptance of the truth for one of active and earnest demonstration.

Divine Mind is ceaselessly imparting blessings, and humanity is waking up to receive them in proportion as it takes to heart Mrs. Eddy's statement that "the Scriptures require more than a simple admission and feeble acceptance of the truths they present" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 197). Suppose a person were struggling in the midst of turbulent waters and a life-belt with a rope attached were thrown out: the drowning man could not be hauled ashore unless he did his part in tenaciously keeping hold of the belt. He would gain nothing by arguing that the waves were very big, or the land a long way off. So, too, the one to whom the ministrations of Christian Science are offered must cease to argue against his own interests, and hold faithfully to the truth, or as much as he apprehends of it, in order that progressive demonstrations may be made and his individual heaven attained.

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