Editorial January 29, 1916 Issue

Following After Personality

Archibald McLellan

Through the spiritual perception with which Mrs. Eddy was so richly endowed, and which she used for the blessing of all mankind, she clearly perceived that one of the grave dangers threatening Christian Scientists and the great cause to which she was so fully consecrated, was the condition of mortal mind which she so aptly named "mere personal attachment" (Manual, p. 40). Not only in the by-laws of the church, but also in her letters of advice and admonition, and even in Science and Health itself, "he that runs may read" that this enemy, which she elsewhere speaks of as "personal contagion" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 116), offers a serious menace to the spiritual advancement of Christian Scientists.

Throughout our Leader's writings is to be found the constant admonition to turn away from the domination of personal and material sense to the perception of divine Principle; in other words, the denial of material testimony and the recognition of infinite Mind as our common Father, the only lawgiver. "Faith in aught else," she writes on page 153 of "Miscellany," "misguides the understanding, ignores the power of God, ... seeks personality for support, unmindful of the divine law of Love." In this way she has led Christian Scientists apart from the guidance of erroneous and fickle mortal opinion to the unchanging wisdom and verities of divine Mind, even as Jesus rebuked the sense of personality when he said: "I receive not honor from men. ... How can ye believe, which receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor that cometh from God only?" On another occasion he disclaimed any credit to himself other than that which results from loving obedience to the divine will, openly declaring, "The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works."

In the early days of Christian Science churches it was very generally the case that there was but one teacher of Christian Science in a church, and quite naturally the members of such a church were largely the students of this teacher. This condition, though it did tend even then to induce a personal control of students which was to be deplored, was perhaps excusable as a product of circumstances. In the tremendous development which has attended the movement, however, these conditions gradually have been outgrown in almost every branch church, although there still remain some few instances where this advance step has not been taken.

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