Article September 1, 1917 Issue

Consecration

ELIZABETH PINCKNEY SKINNER

Webster defines consecration as the "state of being consecrated ; dedication." In the epistle to the Hebrews we are told of "a new and living way, which he [Jesus] hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh." Consecration means a conquest over material sense, which lifts one out of the belief in death, also the belief of mind in matter. As our Leader says, "We should consecrate existence . . . to the Life which mortal sense cannot impair nor mortal belief destroy" (Science and Health, p. 428). The qualities needed to accomplish this victory over fleshly beliefs, and which prepare consciousness to realize the omnipotence of good, are obedience, consecration, and unity. In order to overcome the sense of evil in the world, the belief in a power apart from God, we must learn to obey; that is, to comply with the demands of Truth, submit to its authority, and yield to the impulse, power, or operation of divine Principle, Love. We must learn what it means to consecrate our lives to the service of God ; and we must gain a spiritual sense of unity with good—God and His ideas.

On page 177 of "Miscellaneous Writings" Mrs. Eddy asks: "Will you . . . become real and consecrated warriors? Will you give yourselves wholly and irrevocably to the great work of establishing the truth, the gospel, and the Science which are necessary to the salvation of the world from error, sin, disease, and death?" We should ponder this request. Consecration to the Christ-idea makes one equal to the destruction of any and all error, for evil is but the expression of the subjective state of mortal mind, and though it has built itself to reach high heaven, it was thought before it appeared as matter.

The objectified thought, therefore, is as unreal as its supposed origin,—the evil mind, which is unable to formulate itself into any expression of power that the unity of good and the understanding of the law of Love cannot lay low. As we obediently strive to gain an understanding of the unity and allness of good, we are able to prove by degrees the nothingness of matter, the demonstration of which can be made only in a stern conflict of the denial of mortal selfhood and of the material body, and through the recognition of the idea of divine Mind, the image of Principle. This inspires us to pledge ourselves to a deeper consecration to the cause of Christian Science, to "a more sincere and Christly love of God and our brother, and a more implicit obedience to the sacred teachings of the Bible and our text-book, as well as to the all-inclusive instructions and admonitions of our Church Manual in its spiritual import, that we may indeed reach 'unto the city of the living God'" (Miscellany, p. 46).

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