Article October 27, 1917 Issue

Self-denial

FLORIA A. MOCATTA

To find the true meaning of a word we usually must wade through the sea of material associations and accumulated traditions which conceal its real status in the dictionary of human language. Webster defines self-denial as "denial of one's self; forbearing to gratify one's own desires." A familiar sequence of ideas implies that this practice propitiates an unknown power, whose pleasure it would appear is to deprive worshipers of something considered desirable. Theology perpetuates this belief, which fosters and exaggerated egotism manifested in self-indulgence, in self-righteousness, or in extreme self-effacement,—a state of consciousness which is sometimes only self-seeking in disguise. For the furtherance of its own ends mistaken dogma manipulates these facts and encourages an asceticism which, instead of destroying the selfhood it is seeking to suppress, only accentuates it.

Christian Science, with the illuminating torch of Truth, lends to the question of self-denial a new significance, unfolding fresh areas of spiritual activity. As understood in Christian Science self-denial is the evangelization of human thought through elimination of the belief in life, pain, or pleasure as resident in matter. The self which seeks expression in a thousand subtle ways should be unceasingly denied, for it is only a mortal concept masquerading as God's man; consequently it is but the counterfeit of man as eternally coexisting with God, made in His image and likeness,—a statement contained in the Bible and confirmed by Christian Science.

Constant realization of the only real selfhood will gradually efface from consciousness any falsity needing to be denied, and will reveal God's perfect man, without sin or fault, dwelling where he always was and always will be,—"eternal in the heavens," the true consciousness. Any condemnatory, contradictory creed, attempting to destroy or to lessen man's true individuality, is doomed to eventual oblivion; for the teachings of Christian Science, flowing in an irresistible wave of progression, are steadily annihilating the barriers of sense which hold mortals in the bondage of false doctrines, and these teachings are transforming the consciousness of mankind through the understanding of unadulterated reality.

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