Article December 7, 1912 Issue

ONE THING NEEDFUL

CLARENCE W. CHADWICK.

Humanity's greatest need is to know God. To "draw nigh to God" is not only a Christian duty, it is a paramount need. Job's counsel, "Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace," sounds the key-note of individual and universal salvation. The knowledge or spiritual understanding of God is the only passport to heaven. Blind belief does not unlock the heavenly portals. Humanity must become acquainted with the Giver of all good if they would be the happy recipients of His grace and bounty. God is not acquainted with strangers. Only those who obey His will are known to Him. Respecting this our revered Leader says, "The only guarantee of obedience is a right apprehension of Him whom to know aright is Life eternal" (Science and Health, Pref., p. vii). Sin is excluded from His presence as darkness is from the presence of light. How, then, queries mortal sense, is the sinner to be saved, if God is conscious of good only?

Christian Science solves this seeming enigma of the senses by acquainting humanity with God. The true or spiritual understanding of God uncovers and reveals the mythical nature of what the world calls sin or evil. Then it is that the so-called sinner begins to awaken from his dream of supposed life or existence in matter; in other words, he begins to "put off the old man" and to "put on the new man." This means the purification of that erroneous state of consciousness calling itself a mortal man or woman. It means the extirpation of all thought or belief in sin, but not the loss of any individual man, woman, or child. Mortality is thus put off, and immortality, which alone holds intact every individuality from the least to the greatest, is put on. The erroneous assumption that a single individuality can be absorbed by or lost in the infinite, would deny the eternal unity of God and man. If individuality can be lost, there is no such state as heaven or harmony. Christian Science brings to light man's true individuality by purifying and elevating humanity's sense of being. What the world calls personality is a false or temporal consciousness of both good and evil. This is not to be saved, but exchanged for man's true individuality, which ever reflects the consciousness of good only.

No haughty spirit of ignorant indifference to the spiritual idea will ever usher humanity into the kingdom of heaven. The voice of the Christ speaks just as imperatively in this day and generation: "Without me ye can do nothing." William Penn in commenting upon human life left this sentiment: "It is admirable to consider how many millions of people come into and go out of the world, ignorant of themselves and of the world they have lived in." And Christian Science adds: But the end is not yet; for this coming into and going out is but the picture of a dream, and the dream is not dissipated, here or hereafter, until humanity turns from self to God through an intelligent recognition of Christ, Truth, as the Saviour of the world.

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