LEARNING HOW TO CLIMB

GRACE SQUIRES.

IN the early stages of his experience in Christian Science one is likely to think that when he has sufficiently grown in grace, purged his own consciousness of very evident errors, that his life will be one long uninterrupted harmony. Friends and neighbors, tradesmen and traveling crowds will all fall into line, and through him demonstrate the universal brotherhood of men. From such a view-point there is a later discrepancy which is often bitter, and one has patiently to readjust his approach to what we call the wear and tear of daily life.

In the confusion of this state of mind, an article purporting to point out how the unlovable could become lovable and the insufferable sufferable, was hungrily read by one of the "weary wanderers, athirst in the desert," of whom Mrs. Eddy writes (Science and Health, p. 570); but to that consciousness it failed to make its point, and the unlovable and the insufferable remained. To begin with, he found, after leaving the heights and descending with surprising swiftness into the valley, that the purging of his own consciousness was not the work of a moment, and he decided that if the redemption or even amelioration of his surroundings was only to be gained through his own spotlessness, it would be some time before his affairs would be adjusted. Mrs. Eddy says, "The new birth is not the work of a moment. It begins with moments, and goes on with years" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 15). In his disheartened mood these words were more bitter than encouraging.

But Truth is its own leaven. Through the persistent study of the Bible and Science and Health, coupled with a growing conviction that there must be some definite base upon which life could be harmoniously lived, the demonstration of this point was made, and after growingly frequent days of uninterrupted peace came the realization that he could say with deep sincerity that the unlovable and the unendurable had lost much of their power to invade his life. Yet, looking about, he still found the falling away of some friends, the irritability of others, the dishonesty of business associates, and the selfishness and discourtesy of the world at large, and realized that his demonstration had not been based on the destruction of these things, which he had at first attempted, but rather on the destruction of his own response to them.

His first advance in the right direction was taken when he learned this, that the reformation of the world is not collective but individual. Wrestling with his own errors, instead of wondering about the depravity of others, he more clearly saw the universality and therefore impersonality of evil, an ignorance rather than a viciousness which would use him in common with others, and as two times two became indisputably four to him, he learned the process of its acquirement and ceased to scorn those who still thought this multiple something else. He found, too, that Christian Science has intermediate steps in its application, that no one need remain in the valley even if the heights are distantly indistinct, and that if he could not at a bound love that which was unlovable, he could do the next best, and shut out his sense of anger by sweeping the provocation, the misunderstanding, the insult, even intentional maliciousness from his consciousness.

He learned in time to do this as effectually as though the circumstance had never been, and so laid the axe at the root of criticism, resentment, shutting out weary hours of mortal mind's turning and overturning, and learning in the process the deep spiritual meaning of the Master's declaration, "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me." He determined that it should have nothing in him. From discouraged self-pity as to why this or that should be constantly defeating his climb, he learned that there is no climb without resistance, and its steepness became the test of his strength, the opportunity to measure his understanding of spiritual truth against all material inroads, to find his heaven within and not without.

He read how Jesus, surrounded by a vicious mob and pushed to the brow of the precipice with malicious intent, had stilled neither their violence nor hatred, but "passing through the midst of them went his way." Inexpressibly deep and beautiful the lesson in this miracle became to him,—the divine ability to pass through all forms of evil, and untouched to go one's way in mental separateness. Now, instead of wondering, after some years as a Christian Scientist, why the world is much the same, he finds, in the struggle to overcome its evil beliefs, his own exaltation. As some one has so beautifully expressed it, "Poised, sure, protected, safe, looking only to God, he stands ineffably aloof from aught else."

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