Article November 18, 1916 Issue

No Limitation in Mind

JOSEPH G. ALDEN

The wayfarer in Christian Science, setting out upon that quest which Mrs. Eddy on page 566 of Science and Health has called the "passage from sense to Soul," comes soon to the place where error, stepping out from the shadows of the roadside, seeks to intercept his progress. With a great show of kindly interest it suggests to him that his abilities are so small and his influence is so circumscribed that he cannot hope to render any large or acceptable service in that great realm to which he journeys. It therefore takes deep understanding, diversified talents, and proven ability to fit one for a useful place there, and out of the many who seem to be called to render service only a few are chosen.

At an earlier stage of the journey this same persistent adviser under a different disguise may have come forward with the intimation that the journey is long and wearisome and lonely; that it leads through paths hedged with briers which catch and tear, over bleak mountains whose narrow defiles must be threaded alone, across wide plains where the burning thirst may not be quenched, and out into a great unexplored country where scenes are unfamiliar and faces new. All these warnings were given under the pretense of friendly solicitude, but had the eye of the wayfarer been sharp and his ears keen, they would have pierced the thin disguise of the self-appointed guide, discovered the deceitful nature of error, and detected the subtle poison in the honeyed words.

The sense of limitation is one of the readiest of mortal mind's brood to raise its protest against spiritual progress. It never sees the cleft in the rock ahead or the beam of light in the far distance marking the place of egress from the hidden way. It only sees the stony road, the overhanging cliffs, and the declining sun. It raises its dismal voice at every stage of our journey, but never with more vehemence than at the place where the path, rounding the shoulder of the hill, turns abruptly into the open highway.

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