Editorial June 22, 1912 Issue

"HOW DO YOU FEEL?"

John B. Willis

That the realm of physical feeling harbors all mankind the bulk of the time, and the bulk of mankind all the time, is no less true than that the teaching of the Master and the hope of eternal life demand that we shall learn to live not in the feeling which registers the rule of material sense, but in the knowing which speaks for the dominion of spiritual sense. More than this, when instructed in Christian Science one not only perceives the necessity of moving his residence from the plane of feeling to the plane of perception, but he learns how to begin to bring this about.

Immersed by human belief in the world of sense, men have grown accustomed to think of themselves, and of life as witnessed to by its testimony, and pleasure thus becomes a matter of nerve-excitation. This explains the whirl and hurry of modern times. It is the phenomenon of this mistaken sense of pleasure. The brevity of its satisfaction, however, always begets that restless pursuit of the unattainable which was never more persistent or more pitiful in human history than it is today. This devotion to the life of the sense is not only incited by fleshly appetites and hereditary predisposition, it is authorized and upheld by the largely accepted religious belief that the realm of material sense was divinely instituted, and is therefore wholly legitimate. Human consent is thus given to that common concept and address which fosters our enslavement to the unspiritual. When most Christian believers say, "How do you feel?" they have no thought but that the man of ailing flesh and blood before them is God's man, and they thus find and in so far fix his place in matter. This is the well-night universal attitude, and Christian Science corrects it by awakening men to the true concept of life as a manifestation of Mind. It makes clear the fact that life is not understood, and not entered upon, so far and so long as we identify it with material sense experience.

On page 77 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes: "Existence continues to be a belief of corporeal sense until the Science of being is reached;" and the fundamental declaration of this Science is that matter and all its phenomena are unreal. True spiritual progress is therefore measured, negatively, by the extent of our escape from all thought of life as determined by or realted to physical feeling. Very many of the expereicnes which we speak of as temperamental, sentimental, or emotional are largely material in their origin and explanation; they belong to this same realm of mortal sense; and when we come to understand that the giving up of our false belief about life means escape from the mental turmoil and tragedies which this belief brings to all sensitive people, we begin to realize something of the extent of the transformation which the rule of Christian Science immediately begins to effect. Human feeling is not ignored, it is redeemed.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

"HOW DO YOU FEEL?"

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access