Article January 16, 1915 Issue

Sense of Hindrance Overcome

E. STEDFELD

In working to know the powerlessness of evil, we are sometimes led to believe that we are hindered in our work by some one who has not yet learned the importance of holding "thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true" (Science and Health, p. 261), and who constantly voices error. To learn how a mother overcame such a sense of hindrance may be helpful to some one else. This mother had been having a practitioner's help for her small son, but felt that the work was greatly hindered by a relative who was a member of the household, and who constantly gave out foreboding and pessimistic opinions of the situation. That this constant repetition of error constituted a real impediment to the restoration of harmony, bore heavily on the mother's thought, until the following experience came to her.

While up-stairs with the child, the mother heard a neighbor come in and ask about the child. She also heard the relative's answer, which was, as usual, apprehensive in the extreme. For a moment a sense of great discouragement came to the mother, but over and above this was a reaching out to divine Love for help, for light upon the situation, and instantly this line of reasoning came to her: The thought which my relative is repeating to the neighbor is not, as I know, the truth about the child, whose real being is spiritual and harmonious. Now a thought which is not the truth is not a reality,—is nothing, no-thing,—and bears the same relation to truth that the symbol naught bears to the science of mathematics. One times naught, is, of course, nothing; a hundred or a million times naught is still nothing. The mere repetition or multiplication of the naught does not thereby add to its value or give it any power.

The mother then saw that the statement of discord made about her child, not being the truth, was naught, and the mere repetition or multiplication of the naught (i.e., valueless statement) could not thereby give it value or give it one particle of power; that she need not therefore fear its repetition, nor should she try to give it value in her thought by allowing that she feared it, or by believing that it carried significance or weight. With the realization of the truth of this reasoning, which was based upon Principle, the sense of hindrance fell away from her thought, and the child's release from the discordant conditions followed quickly.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

Honor to Whom Honor is Due