Article January 12, 1918 Issue

The Thorn Road

MARY F. MECREDY

One of the most familiar Bible texts, and one whose literal interpretation, or rather misinterpretation, has plunged many a suffering mortal into smoldering resentment toward God and the universe in general, is the passage, "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth." Explained in the light of Christian Science, however, this text becomes a great comfort to the faithful pilgrim plodding through the quicksands of matter "toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

We read in Habakkuk that God is of too pure eyes to behold evil, and that He cannot look upon iniquity. Such being the case, it is evident that he whom God loves and whom He receives is free from every taint of evil, else God could not look upon him at all. To be received of God, then, we must be conscious of the real man's spiritual perfection. How can the realization of man's true nature be brought about? The advice of the apostle Paul is, "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh."

Let us analyze this advice. We live in a mental world; we see and experience the objectification of our own thoughts, and so long as these thoughts are of matter, we are conscious of a material world only. If, therefore, we would walk in the Spirit, our minds must be transformed from beliefs of flesh to thoughts of Spirit. But, as we read in the epistle to the Galatians, "the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other,"—naturally, since the carnal mind itself is the product of sin. As a consequence, because of our love of the flesh, and because of the mental apathy resultant from habitual reliance upon the evidences of the senses, the wrenching of our thought free from its props in matter is no easy task; in fact, it is because we resist the demands of God to rise out of the flesh that we bring upon ourselves chastisement by His rod. This chastisement is, however, by no means the punishment of a capricious God, but the purifying process through which we are turned from faith in matter to trust in God,—through which we put off the material man and put on the man of God.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

"It is he that hath made us"