Article July 29, 1911 Issue

THE GOAL OF ASPIRATION

GRACE SQUIRES.

MUCH has been said and many excellent articles have appeared in our periodicals corrective of a common misapprehension of the goal toward which the sincere Christian Scientist wends his way. That it is not merely the healing of his ills, his griefs, his limitations, his lacks, and his discords, but is first and last his demonstration or righteousness through which he blends or unites his thought with that of God, both Science and Health and the Scriptures reiterate and confirm. Perhaps the mortal tendency to work in the interests of the physical or material self, keeping the eyes focused on health or supply, blinded to the fact that "self" and not God is still concerning him, is what our Master meant when he said that "strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." Certainly self-interests are not pursued by the few, but are lamentably prevalent.

Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health (p. 4): "The longing to be better and holier, expressed in daily watchfulness and in striving to assimilate more of the divine character, will mold and fashion us anew, until we awake in His likeness." This holy, consecrated effort of the Scientist so to reflect the divine Mind that his entire character shall be remolded, and to reach God thereby, is the treasure he lays up for himself which neither moth nor rust can corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal. Some one may say, "There is no lack in divine Mind and it is right for Scientists to have all that others have." The author of such a remark will see his mistake in time and will move onward and upward. In the mean time his influence needs correction, because he gives onlookers a wholly wrong estimate of Christian Science; and as for the young student, struggling for the first time to correct his false estimate of the relative value of things material and things spiritual, such a statement confuses and discourages him. He asks himself with some misgiving what really he is after, and concludes it must be the loaves and fishes which in some mysterious way have become legitimatized.

In "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 204) Mrs. Eddy says that the influence of Truth gives mortals "new motives, new purposes, new affections, . . . a marked loss of faith in evil, in human wisdom, human policy, ways, and means." She adds that it "unselfs the mortal purpose." For a Scientist to say there is no lack in divine Mind is to speak truly or equivocally. There is no lack of truth in divine Mind, but there is a tremendous lack of materiality there, and to attempt to prove in one instance what he struggles to disprove in the next, is to give destructive evidence of the house divided against itself which cannot stand. One can always clear his mental view-point by studying the scientific translations of mortal mind. (See Science and Health, p. 116). It will be seen that in the third degree, spiritual understanding, spiritual power, love, and holiness occupy the Scientist's every endeavor.

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