Article January 2, 1915 Issue

Finding the Higher Meaning

ROBERT NALL

Because Christian Science is the Science of Life, embracing the whole of man's spiritual and physical needs, it is of the highest importance that we bring to bear in its study and demonstration a sincere desire for well-balanced judgement and a clear apprehension of the truth. As our prayer in this respect is answered, we shall avoid two errors,—that of minimizing or ignoring certain facts, and that of failing to understand the spiritual meaning of fundamental terms. It is impossible to read Mrs. Eddy's writings without seeing that she recognized this danger. There was no obliquity in the wide sweep of her vision; rather, because of the spiritual altitude to which she had attained, she was able to steer with unerring accuracy between the Scylla of erroneous and misplaced emphasis on the one hand, and the Charybdis of belief that the disastrous effects of much unregenerate human thought can be lightly set aside as of little account.

Mrs. Eddy franky admits the difficulty of expressing metaphysical statements in current language. "Mortal thought," she says, "does not at once catch the higher meaning, and can do so only as thought is educated up to spiritual apprehension" (Science and Health, p. 349). She took extraordinary pains, as we now know, so to use the symbols of words in imparting revealed truth to the world that no earnest inquirer after spiritual good can be disappointed. Christianity is a religion of basic truths rather than of mechanical rules, and Mrs. Eddy in expounding the Science of Christianity here followed the example of the Master. She repeats many times certain statements which are the bases of all effectual work for God and humanity. It is these that we need to understand and apply in their right relation, and about which some corrective thought may be requisite.

What is sometimes forgotten is that the affirmation of truth should always be accompanied by the denial of error, until the manifestation of error yields to the power of Truth as scientifically declared. Much emphasis is very properly laid upon good as expressing the highest and most comprehensive quality or attribute of God. Rightly speaking, we cannot think of good without thinking of God. But it is not possible in our present sense of things to demonstrate the allness of good, if its supposititicus opposite, evil, is ignored. The one is real, because it is of God; the other is unreal, because it is a false sense of that which is not. But, it may be asked, how far have we gone beyond the mere affirmation of this? Are we proving evil to be a false belief, or we attenuating good so that it stands to us for a sentiment rather than the greatest factor in the truth of being? When good is to us a synonym for the righteousness which is the active antithesis of evil, and which makes no concession to sin in any of its many forms, then we are catching its "higher meaning," and it will cease to be an uncertain concept. The Puritan made God's rule something akin to a reign of terror. The reaction from this is a tendency toward believing that God's rule and government are characterized by tolerance and lenity in respect to wrong-doing. Between these two extremes there comes legitimate Christian Science teaching, which, while it lays stress on the allness of good and fully believes that God is Love, recognizes that the human opposites of these must be sternly dealt with and their native nothingness demonstrated.

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