Editorial August 12, 1916 Issue

Two Ways

William D. McCrackan

ACCORDING to human apprehension there are two ways,—one of the flesh, the other of Spirit. These ways are not equally good or true or real. The way of the flesh naturally brings forth the works of the flesh; the way of spiritual understanding, the fruits of Spirit,—"love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law." Mrs. Eddy, in a wonderfully comforting description of the two ways, writes on page 55 of "Unity of Good": " 'The way,' in the flesh, is the suffering which leads out of the flesh. 'The way,' in Spirit, is 'the way' of Life, Truth, and Love, redeeming us from the false sense of the flesh and the wounds it bears." Humanity has the choice between these two ways, and Scripture assures us there is no law against the fruits of the better way. The way of the flesh tears itself a passage through human experience and eventually reaches an open space of hopeless satiety, which must again become the starting-point for further journeyings. There is no real advance but by the way of Spirit.

Christian Scientists have chosen the way of Spirit as the better way. They have hailed the Messiah of their deliverance, the Christ coming "with healing in his wings." This way is safeguarded by the law of God. It requires much sacrifice of self, which brings its daily reward, and in the end reaps life everlasting. Some of self-surrender is already obviously joyous. Sickness is a phase of self, and is it not a joyous experience to surrender sickness? The crux of the whole matter would lie in the law. Is there a law which makes continued suffering and wounds necessary during spiritual progress? Christian Science, the Comforter, holds out the reasonable hope that obedience to Principle dissipates any such necessity, that progress can be made without inevitable suffering, and can be placed under the aegis of a compassionate Science, "redeeming us from the false sense of the flesh and the wounds it bears."

Christian Scientists therefore are able to rejoice in the new way of Science, which means deliverance from the belief in the desirability, attractiveness, or power of sin, from any supposed validity inherent in disease, and from the inevitableness of death. Christian Science, teaching that mankind suffers only from its false beliefs, proves that the substitution of right ideas for these false beliefs of delivers from the penalty of suffering. Since resistance to truth plays the largest part in this supposed necessity for suffering, it only remains for mankind to be willing to surrender the beliefs of the flesh in order to be exempt from the suffering of the flesh.

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