Article April 5, 1913 Issue

AGAINST DISCOURAGEMENT

FLORENCE STRATTON WEAVER.

In considering St. Paul's statement, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit," one recognizes at once that it rebukes the habit of condemning others, but he may not perceive that it further rebukes the habit of self-condemnation. Sometimes we are kinder to others than we are to ourselves. There is a tendency to keep self ever before a bar of justice, where we constantly plead guilty of having "come short of the glory of God." This leads to discouragement, which we are taught in Christian Science is evil.

Such a sense of discouragement once argued with the writer all day long, but it was held somewhat in abeyance until about eleven in the evening, when every outlook seemed dark and forbidding. Help was sought but found unavailable at that hour, and the work had to be done alone. Then came the thought, "I'll take my stand for God; I know that He is the center and circumference of my being." A passage from "Miscellaneous Writings" also came which proved a beacon of light; namely, that Christian Science "is not a search after wisdom, it is wisdom: it is God's right hand grasping the universe,—all time, space, immortality, thought, extension, cause, and effect ; constituting and governing all identity, individuality, law, and power" (p. 364). Almost instantly light came. Before this it seemed that it would take hours to gain a sufficiently clear sense to make it possible to do needed work for others, but now it was done quickly and joyfully, and the writer retired with an abounding sense of the allness of God.

We may always know that discouragement comes from a mortal material sense of things, for, as Mrs. Eddy has said, "Darkness and doubt encompass thought, so long as it bases creation on materiality" (Science and Health, p. 551). Discouragement is therefore only a call to "go up higher." As in Jacob's experience, there stands by us in every dark hour a means of ascent, a ladder by which we can mount up to God, Spirit, and be at peace. It is that knowledge of the truth which, as Jesus declared, makes free. Escape from the manacles of discouragement is possible to all, and it is effected in the scientific denial of the belief of a self apart from God.

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