Article May 27, 1911 Issue

"AS HAVING NOTHING, AND YET POSSESSING ALL THINGS"

SAMUEL GREENWOOD

Perhaps the sweetest note to human ears in the message of Christian Science is its unfailing hope. It admits of no incurable ills, no incorrectible errors, even the uttermost of human distress and despair is not considered beyond the redemptive reach of infinite Love. In Christian Science all may find encouragement to be unwearied in well-doing, since, because of the infinite nature of God, good, evil must eventually yield up its baseless claim in human consciousness. Hence the achievement of every good aim is only a question of persistent work in the right direction. Although, to the present sense of things, the fact of man's divine sonship does not fully appear, the Master's benediction still rests upon those who do not see and yet believe.

So-called life in matter has no relation to Spirit; therefore it has no consciousness of spiritual being, or of man's spiritual possessions and endowments. Its highest attainments are but dreams of the materially unattainable. Limited to this material sense, stung by its disappointments and denials, its hopes deferred and its mockery of their highest aspirations, mankind have turned baffled and despairing from its failures and its limitations, its misery and its mystery. Into this darkened sense Christian Science comes as a "great light," revealing not only the shadowy and false nature of materiality, but the real man's spiritual liberty and perfection. In the words of Mrs. Eddy, it says to mortals, "The illusion of material sense, not divine law, has bound you, entangled your free limbs, crippled your capacities, enfeebled your body, and defaced the tablet of your being" (Science and Health, p. 227).

The material concept blinds humanity to the capacity for good and the right to dominion which belong to God's children, and in the spiritual enlightenment it brings, in showing the true relation between God and man, is seen the redemptive power of Christian Science. Although as appreciative of love and joy and beauty as the more favored, countless victims of environment, of education, or the accident of birth, the handicap of seemingly insurmountable disadvantages, supposedly inherited weakness, or the unceasing demand to toil for daily bread, are denied everything but the freedom to work and suffer. Not one of all these but would gladly escape from this bondage did he but know the way, not one whose outlook would not begin to brighten and his environment become less rigid, if he discerned even a little of the truth that man is the son of God and is subject only to good. Through Christian Science even the most abject victim of adverse circumstances may begin to rise to a more spiritual concept of being, and thus find his way out into a larger and truer sense of things.

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THE CIRCLE OF LIFE
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