Article October 12, 1912 Issue

GAIN, NOT LOSS

ELMER A. WOLFE.

To be profitable and useful, all study must be pursued in a spirit of deference which concedes that the instructor knows more than the pupil. Likewise, if he is to gain the knowledge for which he is seeking, the student of Science and Health must acquire the habit of continually suspending his own judgment, for he will find himself in contact with much which, in the light of commonly accepted beliefs, may seem to be transcendental and even contradictory. He must be ready to cast out as fast as possible any opinion which his study reveals to him to be erroneous, no matter how fixed or treasured the belief may be, and by so doing he will acquire an understanding before which all doubt as to the possibility of putting into practise the teachings of Christian Science here and now will vanish and even the apparent contradictions will disappear.

It is the implicit belief of the average individual that man is now both spiritual and material, and that he has material tendencies and desires, but that he has a possible chance of attaining a spiritual state of consciousness after death, and not infrequently the student of Christian Science gains the impression that man gets into the understanding of Truth and the kingdom of God by commencing where he is, and that by correcting, enlarging, and developing that which he already has, he finally reaches perfection. It is as impossible, however, to build an understanding of spiritual life on a foundation of knowledge derived from the carnal mind or on anything of which the carnal mind gives evidence, as it was for the ancients to succeed with the building of the tower of Babel, and such efforts will result in the same confusion. Paul declared the carnal mind, the mind of materiality, to be "enmity against God : for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." Therefore the seeker must be ready to cast out, as having neither truth nor value, every way of thinking and all the so-called knowledge which is based directly or indirectly upon the physical senses.

The history of the ages, with their long and apparently almost fruitless struggle against evil, surely offers proof that the beliefs held respecting evil, and the methods of overcoming it, have been based upon an erroneous conception of its nature. The acknowledgment and recognition of evil as a power, and the acceptance of the reality of matter and its supposed laws, has apparently rendered Christianity helpless. Christian Science, recognizing the omnipotence and omnipresence of God as a present reality and factor in the affairs of men, declares that "Spirit and its formations are the only realities of being" (Science and Health, p. 264); and he who is gaining the light begins to perceive that in his search for truth evil (error) cannot be admitted as a factor, since God, the Principle of being, the only cause and creator, is good and good only, and hence that evil is no part of His creation and cannot be expressed in the infinite manifestation. He learns also that evil has no place, even under present conditions, except as a false belief to be guarded against and cast out through a knowledge of reality.

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