Article November 3, 1917 Issue

Routine of Expectation

JOAN HUDGENS ROME

Some one has very beautifully said of Mrs. Eddy, "She never allowed her day to dawn darkened with the clouds of yesterday." One day cannot be the same in routine as the day before, and one cannot expect it to be the same to-morrow as it is to-day, if he is acknowledging the omnipotence of the truth which has been held in thought through the intervening twenty-four hours. Neither is a human being just the same one day as he was the day before, or even the hour before, because the truth has been working through and above his consciousness and that of thousands of others, and this truth is effectual, as Paul tells us, "to the pulling down of strong holds." In "Miscellaneous Writings" we read that "the textbook of Christian Science is transforming the universe" (p. 372). Never could a thought of Truth fail, so each moment is new and different and more spiritual and joyous.

Of all the phases of mortal existence one of the most baneful is the sense of the monotony and routine of affairs which make up the experiences of that existence. The first impressions of a child are of activities in its environment,—in the household living, in what is considered necessary and correct in its food, its clothes, its pleasures, and the expectation of events which mean a broadening out of labor, of lessons in discipline, also the education and responsibilities of mortals. All this the child-mortal is taught to call "life," and he expects this routine to develop for himself through all the years to come. A mortal can have no outlook but to go through the day in the same order of demands on his time as he did yesterday. He will see others going monotonously through the days according to their personal conceptions of living. So he walks in the shadows of weariness, and finally the time comes when he says of the days, "I have no pleasure in them," for the days of man are as grass. As every Christian Scientist knows, this concept of life is not the reality of being, but is the illusion of life in matter, the belief in routine of expectation and routine of submission to matter which seems to be a law.

Our Leader says, "The professors of Christian Science must take off their shoes at our altars; they must unclasp the material sense of things at the very threshold of Christian Science: they must obey implicitly each and every injunction of the divine Principle of life's long problem, or repeat their work in tears" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 120).

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