Article December 9, 1916 Issue

Joy Overcomes Sorrow

FLORENCE E. B. DONALDSON

In one of those striking passages which so often bring instant conviction of their truth to the readers of the textbook of Christian Science, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy gives utterance to the following statements (p. 304): "This is the doctrine of Christian Science: that divine Love cannot be deprived of its manifestation, or object; that joy cannot be turned into sorrow, for sorrow. is not the master of joy; that good can never produce evil; that matter can never produce mind nor life result in death." This definite reversal of things generally believed is well calculated to startle the human mind out of some at least of its dreams of false belief and erroneous teaching. The passage quoted is so wide in its applciation that it will be sufficient to take the single phrase which puts joy and sorrow into their correct relative positions, and implies that sorrow is merely the denial of the fulness and immutability of man's heritage of joy. Joy is positive and real, while sorrow is negative, temporal, and unreal.

In strange reversal of the truth, the human mind has continually placed sorrow on a pedestal, as something to be admired, looked up to, and if not actually sought after, at least as counting for much more than joy. So curiously perverted has the world's judgment of Christianity proved itself in this respect, that it has recognized Christ Jesus, its ideal, as mainly a "man of sorrows," rather than as the anointed of God; yet he himself gave an exact opposite of this picture when he said, "These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full."

Christian Science teaches that that which is spiritual is eternal. St. Paul declares joy to be one of the fruits of Spirit. It is the understanding of reality which brings joy to the heart, for it is based on a knowledge of God. There could be no possible conception of sorrow in divine Mind. Omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent good could not know a thought of loss or separtion. It is spiritual sense alone which enables mankind to rise above the seeming sense of void. When David mourned and wept over a sick child, but rose up, and anointed himself, and resumed his normal mode of living as soon as he was told the child had died, his servants failed to understand his action; but the man after God's own heart, who had realized the need of true penitence for sin, could not be mastered by sorrow for one he knew to have only passed to another plane of consciousness. Sorrow cannot stand before an abiding sense of good.

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