Article December 28, 1912 Issue

PAIN OVERCOME

IGERNA B. J. SOLLAS.

A recent author, who is gifted above the ordinary with the vision of faith, points out the difficulty we experience in speaking freely of those things about which we feel most deeply, while "at the same time it is the deepest feeling which most persistently urges to self-expression." One of the subjects upon which this author feels deeply is the religious value of pain. Though she writes of it with gentleness and reverence as well as conviction, she conceives the teaching of Christian Science to be at variance with the truth, and her initial statement is that one root gives rise to the attitude of the Christian Scientist on the one hand, and on the other to that of the modern unbeliever, who claims that since pain is an undeniable fact, the God of Christian faith cannot exist. This root is "the assumption that pain ought not to exist."

Christian Science teaches that pain exists only as a phenomenon of false human belief, and from this standpoint Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health that "divine Science reveals the necessity of sufficient suffering, ... to quench the love of sin;" also that "Science removes the penalty only by first removing the sin which incurs the penalty" (pp. 36, 40). These are only two of very many quotations which might be given in illustration of the teaching of Christian Science. Mrs. Eddy shows consistently in all her writings that in human experience suffering is the inevitable outcome of sin and of false concepts of God and man. No one is more emphatic than she in teaching that none but the sinner can pay the price of sin. She shows how Truth destroys sin and false concepts, and that with the appearing of right sense pain must vanish; but if any one should surmise that the path is made too easy for Christian Scientists, he will do well to read this passage: "In proportion to a man's spiritual progress, he will indeed drink of our Master's cup, and be baptized with his baptism! be purified as by fire,—the fires of suffering; then hath he part in Love's atonement, for 'whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.' Then shall he also reign with him; he shall rise to know that there is no sin, that there is no suffering; since all that is real is right" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 124).

Rejecting equally the view of the unbelieving and that which they suppose Christian Scientists hold, religious critics are accustomed to say that the right way to meet pain is to exercise courage and patience, to strive to attain self-mastery, to rise above our pain, and to be ready to rejoice in tribulation, regarding it as concealing blessings. "The whole value of suffering," they say, "is in the effect of its right endurance." Now suffering loses none of its educative value to the Christian Scientist who may need its rebuke. He too requires courage and endurance to meet suffering. To realize while in pain that this pain is unreal and is no part of God's plan, and to realize it so clearly that the pain vanishes; to resist the temptation to self-pity and the temptation to seek consolation in the pity of friends,—these exercises indeed mean self-mastery.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

PAIN OVERCOME

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access