Article October 25, 1913 Issue

Overcoming the World

FRANK H. SPRAGUE

Mrs. Eddy describes Christian Science as "the law of God, the law of good, interpreting and demonstrating the divine Principle and rule of universal harmony" (Rudimental Divine Science, p. 1). The individual finds his place in this order by laying aside the personal sense of self and becoming a channel for the operation of the law of good. The propensity, however innocently entertained, to exploit or direct the activities of good from the standpoint of self, derives its support from the belief that life is finite, self-centered, self-determinative. This belief extends through all the gradations of material manifestation, from the human type down to the lowest monad or simplest form of atomic and molecular activity.

The pseudo-world, the supposititious kingdom of matter, represents the outgrowth of this erroneous belief multiplied, extended, diversified, divided and subdivided ad infinitum, until the actuality of being is lost sight of in a maze of self-deception and self-confusion. Through repeated exercise and gradual dissemination, phases of belief which in their incipient and rudimentary stages would readily be recognized as mere creations of finite fancy, appear clothed more and more with the semblance of reality, genuineness, power, and authority. Lines of experience which conform to well-worn channels of belief come after a time to be accepted as laws; and yet this gradual transition from the unfounded and ephemeral to the estate of seeming authenticity and fixity cannot add one iota of reality to that which in its genesis and constitution does not possess the elements of reality. In short, the tenacity and universal scope of a belief does not constitute it more, or less, than a belief.

It helps to clear up the situation to see that the realm of materiality, imposing and formidable though it may appear to the senses, rests in the final analysis on a basis of abstract falsity. It is not difficult to recognize the abstract and unsubstantial character of a belief which is just taking form in some phase of superstition, misrepresentation, or imposition, and we ought not to be fooled in the case of matter by the circumstance that the belief is so firmly entrenched in human consciousness that it is scarcely challenged by the world at large. Many another deception has held world-wide sway in a similar manner.

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