MENTAL WORK

GRACE SQUIRES.

The mental work of the Christian Scientist, like all that he does, needs constant examination and analysis, because of the persistent tendency of mortal mind to drift into error. Unless we watch, the tendency to place weight on our own argument may develop in consciousness a mistaken sense of our own power which disproportions in equal ratio our dependence on God.

The mortal sense of separateness from God is so complete, one's thoughts and acts seem so surely his own, that he may be bewitched into a continued independence which in time brings forth disaster and dismay. The very encroachments of error, its bold insistence to occupy the foreground, to be the protagonist in every mental drama, may lead one to increase his arguments rather than his trust, until mortal mind seems to hold all the field, while mental work begins, and is apt to end, with his own futile effort.

Our Leader corrects this tendency throughout her writings, and most clearly in the Preface to Science and Health, wherein she points out that many imagine the healing in Christian Science to be the result of the action of mortal mind, and explains that it is not this, but the operation of divine Principle, in other words, God; that we therefore need clearly to disrobe the mortal thought of any supposed sufficiency in itself, and to lean with reverent dependence on the giver of every good and perfect gift.

Nothing is more apparent to the student of the gospels than Christ Jesus' selfless dependence on his Father. No situation obscured his vision. To quote passages illustrative of this is to quote practically the whole gospel. He neither spoke nor acted without acknowledging that both the thought and the act proceeded from the Father. Since he is "the way," shall we not do well to follow in his divine steps, pondering with patient analysis every word and deed? "Every human thought should turn instinctively to the divine Mind as its sole center and intelligence" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 307). This gives the Christian Scientist a theme for his every prayer. Whatever his improvisation, he must not for an instant lose this tonality. It is related that when the gentle Emerson once stepped out from a hot, distempered antislavery meeting, the contrast from its fume and fury to the speaking stillness and beauty of a June day rebuked his petty turmoil with its own vastness, and seemed to say, "Why so hot, my little man? Why so hot?"

Perhaps it would be equally well for us to step out of our finite sense of self and things and get large, broad, convincing views, that outline the whole, that proportion and unify, rather than to magnify our pains and defeats through the microscope of too constant and too close analysis. To contemplate God's presence and power, to understand the whole of divine harmony from such symbolic appeals as even human sense cannot wholly blur, the glory of the sky, the fragrance of the flowers, the hush and wonder of that communicable presence which every sentient landscape gives,—to feel oneself inevitably drawn toward the beauty of Truth, its climax, not its disfigurement, will progress him farther along his mental march from sense to Soul, than peering into error, balancing the pros and cons of this and that suspicion, which grows Argus-eyed on inspection, or holding any denial in thought which unconsciously deepens rather than effaces its outlines.

Mrs. Eddy says, "You continue the mental argument in the practice of Christian healing until you can cure without it instantaneously, and through Spirit alone" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 359). A child has to see a real apple cut in two, its portions held apart and then placed together, and this repeated many times before he knows that two halves make a whole. Later, when he has grasped this fact, he dispenses with his symbols.

With the ultimatum of instantaneous and spiritual healing before us, would it not be well to endeavor earnestly to approximate this state of consciousness? to discard little by little the divided apple of mortal mind's protestation and analysis, and more and more to leave the field to God? To know that the health, the peace, the love we feel, He has made possible, that in these higher moments the Holy Ghost has come upon us, and the power of the Highest has overshadowed us,—this brings a deep realization of our dependence upon divine Love, our inability of our own selves to do anything.

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