Article August 25, 1917 Issue

Waiting Patiently on God

SAMUEL GREENWOOD

The value of patience lies in the fact that permanent success in any line of human endeavor cannot be achieved without it. Human consciousness, imprisoned in its beliefs of matter and evil and seeking a way of escape, finds that these errors cannot be lightly brushed aside, even after their unreal nature has been recognized and acknowledged. "It is easier to desire Truth," Mrs. Eddy declares, "than to rid one's self of error" (Science and Health, p. 322). It is a simple matter to wish for freedom from sin, but quite another thing to stop sinning; yet to "rid one's self of error" and to stop sinning is the indispensable price of human salvation. False theories, ignorance, and superstition, which oppress and enslave mankind, give up their control only before a positive and applied knowledge of the truth, expressed in orderly and progressive accomplishment. To become impatient at the delay, even though a genuine effort is being made to demonstrate Christian Science, betrays a lack of comprehension of the real situation, and only tends to increase or to prolong one's difficulties.

Those who understand Christian Science sufficiently to see that the human problem is mental, know that the way of escape from error lies through mental betterment, to be effected by the constant thinking of better thoughts and the doing of better things, up to the point of possessing the Mind that was in Christ Jesus. "Love is not hasty to deliver us from temptation," Mrs. Eddy writes on page 22 of Science and Health, "for Love means that we shall be tried and purified." It is not that Love is not waiting at this moment to welcome us into heavenly consciousness, but that human thought and desire must first be purified before that consciousness can be wholly attained. Whether the process of purification shall be slow or fast, rests with mortals themselves. Most of us honestly long for the delights of heaven, but shrink from the pangs of purification, until we learn from experience that there is no other road leading into God's kingdom.

The injunction to wait patiently on the Lord is not intended to excuse or encourage tardiness in one's Christian practice, but rather to rebuke that headlong quality of mortals known as will-power, which would impel them to climb up some other way into the realm of harmony rather than enter through the door of obedience to Principle. Although the attempt to invade the heavenly kingdom by force may sometimes bring a temporary sense of success, there is always a return to the original starting-point, because of the absence of true spiritual impulsion. This method is essentially that of the carnal mind, which has no higher concept of reformation than the overcoming of error with error.

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