Article April 19, 1913 Issue

COMPLETE MAN

IRVING C. TOMLINSON, M.A.

A distinct impression left by the last annual meeting of The Mother Church was the fact that Christian Science is giving to its followers a clearer understanding and a profounder sympathy for their fellow men. One of the speakers quoted an English statesman as saying that "we must learn to think in two hemispheres." When Christian Scientists awaken to the fact that their brethren reside in all parts of the civilized globe, they feel an interest not only in the coreligionists of their own land, but also in those of all other lands and of the isles of the sea. Profound is the meaning of the words of the poet, "No pent-up Utica contracts your powers." As the thought of fellowship thus expands, we gratefully recall the words of a well-known bishop of Boston, that "only in the loves we have for others than ourselves can we truly live."

Advancing farther in our thought of the breadth of Christian brotherhood, we remember that Christ Jesus truly exemplified this all-embracing sense. Mediating upon this example, we find that he whom mankind is bidden to follow, reflected the infinite character of the Father. Jesus taught men how to control self by yielding wholly to God's control, and by his obedience to divine law he became the master of himself and all mankind. Most truly was it said of him that he went about doing good. Surely no child smiled in his presence that it did not gladden his tender heart; not a single tear of a repentant outcast failed to touch his loving thought. Science and Health makes it plain that Christ Jesus presents the true ideal, and that each one can set before him, therefore, nothing less than the attainment of this ideal.

Conscious unity with God brings to mortals freedom and power, before which all sense of limitation must needs go down. Spiritual man includes in himself all that we hear and know of good as seen in the masculine representative, together with the beauty, loveliness, and grace of character manifested by what we name woman. Mrs. Eddy expresses very clearly the height, breadth, and depth of man on page 577 of Science and Health where, speaking of him as "two individual natures in one," she says: "This compounded spiritual individuality reflects God as Father-Mother, not as a corporeal being. In this divinely united spiritual consciousness, there is no impediment to eternal bliss,—to the perfectibility of God's creation." Mankind, then, must strive to achieve this perfection, knowing that the only way truly to glorify God is to become more like Him.

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