Article December 23, 1916 Issue

Sublimity of Truth

CHARLES A. DANFORTH

The writer knows a man who had labored for years under the seeming burden of a great weakness, and who was made so sick and brought so low morally by drink and profanity that he contemplated an erroneous way of leaving the world. Instead of following out this plan, he sought out a Christian Science practitioner and appealed to him, "For God's sake help me!" This appeal to Christian Science, after material efforts had failed, revealed a childlike trust and full dependence on God's word understood, as an absolute healing power in time of need. When this man left the practitioner his thought had become so purified and uplifted, his whole basis of reasoning had become so regenerated, that he found himself healed. The false appetite, the desire for that which was not good, the belief that pleasure and pain existed in matter, had all left his consciousness; and in place there came the uplifting assurance of his true self, the self that reflected God, the self that could never express anything other than peace and harmony and health and happiness. Like unto those who were healed in Jesus' time, and those who are healed in Christian Science today through the Christ-understanding of God's spiritual law of good, this man had found the truth that frees human consciousness from material viewpoints and erroneous beliefs, and therefore frees the body from all expressions and manifestations of such beliefs.

We may glean from this man's experience a lesson,—that, whatever our walk in life may be, if health and strength and freedom from all untruth is our aim, we must trustfully and understandingly realize that truth not error, harmony not discord, divine Principle not human device, are the real things that guide and govern and protect us in the daily activity of our work. It is not merely the word of God affirmed and declared that demonstrates the healing power of Truth, but the word spiritually understood, consecratedly lived, and intelligently applied. Jesus said, "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life."

Spiritual understanding, far removed from mortal conjecture and human reasoning, solves every earthly problem. There is no error, discord, or failure in Truth,—no sin, sickness, sorrow, or exaggeration in the real man. Truth can never change or vary, and Principle is the divine source of all truth. It is only when the subtlety of doubt, distrust, fear, or mistaken human belief creeps into consciousness—the illusion that matter in some way has a power apart from God—that the healing work is retarded or hindered, until we bow our hearts in humble obedience to divine Love, in whom is no shadow of turning. It is only through such striving, such conscientious effort, that we awaken from the dream of physical sense, with its false pleasures and pains and pretensions, and find ourselves standing firmly and honestly with God upon the rock of Truth. Then, as naturally and inevitably as the light of day follows the darkness of night, the doors of heaven (perfect being) are opened to our spiritualized thought and the healing of all discord is ours.

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