Article December 27, 1913 Issue

A Broader Outlook

SAMUEL GREENWOOD

MORTAL thought revolves around the supposition that life is a creation or development of what it terms matter, and that man has therefore a material origin, personality, and environment. Limited by this belief to a material outlook, mortals mistake ephemeral sense-phenomena for realities, and submit to the reign of materialism as the divinely chosen means for governing the universe. Human passions and impulses, ambitions and desires, are the product of this false concept, the earth and heaven of so-called mortal consciousness; and only as this consciousness reaches through Christian Science a higher and broader view, do we begin to apprehend the wholly spiritual nature of life and its manifestations.

"Here [in the material sense of things] have we no continuing city," said Paul; hence Christians should not consider it their abiding-place, nor be influenced by the testimony of matter to the extent of feeling at home in it. We seek a city "to come," continued the apostle, not implying a future state but a change of consciousness. However, while we are satisfied with a purely material sense of health and life, happiness and prosperity, we are not seeking that spiritual habitation or heavenly consciousness spoken of in Scripture as "made without hands." Contentment with worldly success or case is always fatal to Christian progress, for it is, in effect, a mesmerism in which one is oblivious to the presence and actuality of God's kingdom on earth, the reign of good in individual consciousness.

It were well to pause sometimes to ask ourselves what we are working for, what we hope to accomplish with all our days of labor and nights of anxious thought. What do we expect to have left in our possession for it all when the dream is spent? The days pass on in unbroken continuity. No matter how delightful may seem the hour of some cherished fulfilment, we may not prolong its passing or hold consciousness at that point, for we cannot stay the unfolding of human experience. The days continue their procession while mortals enact their little dramas, while they make and spend their hundreds or their millions, labor and plan to provide for present wants or a future of ease, and follow the line of their desire. Here it may be asked, To what is the passing of the days taking us? What is the end in view of our seeking and striving? A mere livelihood, the possession of money and lands, of temporal power and pleasure? What of good do we expect to retain permanently in our experience as the result of what we are now doing? Is our outlook confined to materiality that it occupies so much of our attention, or is there nothing more worthy than the attractions of the passing show for which we are willing to work?

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