Article July 15, 1911 Issue

REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING

CASSIUS M. LOOMIS.

There must be a scientific boundary or legitimate use for the action of thought called memory. To the advanced student in truth, memory ought to be a faculty nicely adjusted to scientific usage. Properly cultivated, it becomes a talent most worthy. When we become followers of Christ, we are of one Mind,—"forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before." St. Paul must have found it profitable, even in his day of persecution and worldliness, to forget many a hard experience to which a less spiritually minded man would have clung. Thus has every teacher of the past had his blessings to remember, as well as his woes to forget.

But do not the gospel truths of Paul's teachings concern us now as never before? Are we indeed worthy of the name of Christian? Are we letting go little indignities, petty words of careless import, even mentally denying the little drift of gossip which puts out neighbor in an unfavorable light,—forgetting all these because we know that God's perfect image is perfect still? Have we really attained to this degree of excellence in Christian Science? Then with the Master we can say, understandingly: "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God."

One of the most noticeable effects that the study of Christian Science has upon the beginner is the doing away with personal criticism. The reason for this is of course that the student begins early to realize that mortality is below criticism, and that God's perfect image is above it. In this event he quickly falls into the habit of forgetting his former alleged standards of judging people, and remembers that only the perfect, unfallen man of God's making is to be considered at all; therefore the criticism, should it be voiced, has no weight whatever. What a beautiful deliverance from error! Carrying this thought farther, must we not remember that the ministry of Jesus Christ—his healing work, his forgiveness of sin, his strenuous denial of pharisaical usages—was not the result of a scholarly intellect trained to commit to memory mighty secrets of storied wisdom? Rather did the Galilean Prophet glory in the thought that the most effectual truths of right living were sooner revealed to babes than to the doctors of law. His parables of greatest moment a child could memorize; his most stinging rebuke needed no explanation.

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