Article December 14, 1912 Issue

"BE YE SEPARATE."

MARY STEWART.

IN Christian Science one becomes conscious of "the new man," or the truth about man, in proportion as "the old man" with his deeds is "put off," as false sense is put out of consciousness. In correcting a false belief which has been accepted as true teaching, and in clearing out all the effects of belief in evil, one has to pay the utmost farthing and let go every personal association and circumstance connected with it, in order to prove to oneself and to others his genuine repentance and reformation.

This cutting loose from the old in consciousness has its natural expression in outward separation, not through human will, but through divine direction, for the wine-press has to be trodden alone. One must become willing and glad to lay down personal sense in order that he may discern the truth sufficiently to understand and begin to follow the teaching and practise of Jesus and of Christian Science as revealed to this age through Mrs. Eddy. If one has not known enough to reach this through Science only, it is sure to be found through suffering. This is a slow, hard way, but what matters that if, as Mrs. Eddy writes, "the lesson is sufficient to exalt you" (Science and Health, p. 266); for as she further says, "the goal of goodness" must be "assiduously earned and won" (p. 233), and the process is a giving up of nothing for something.

The awful lengths to which mortal sense will go when it has its way, and the evil influences which have been brought to light as Truth has uncovered error, must have made all Christian Scientists look to themselves and to their past and present attitude, while remembering the Biblical warning, "Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall." The false charity and belief of goodness and kindness which sometimes condones or hides or refuses to see evil, or does not admit certain forms of wrong-doing to be wholly evil, and tries to sustain or protect persons who are the operators or channels of error, is not Christian charity or love, but the effect of malicious animal magnetism. The effects of ignorance and self-mesmerism can only be destroyed by eliminating their roots.

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