Article August 31, 1918 Issue

"Our light affliction"

GERALDINE VIEILLE

At a time when our Government is making what are undeniably just demands upon its citizens in the way of curtailing and revising their daily expenditures, especially in the way of food, it might be well for us to determine the spiritual significance of these demands and their relation to individual growth. To the one who has learned to look upon every human problem as an opportunity to overcome some false sense of being and to gain more understanding of man's true selfhood, this testing time should be what Mrs. Eddy speaks of as "a feast of Soul and a famine of sense" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 263); but to the one who is in bondage to what he calls the necessary demands and legitimate cravings of appetite, the obligation of setting aside self-indulgence in order to demonstrate brotherly love may seem a burden and a stumblingblock.

On page 260 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, we read, "Selfishness and sensualism are educated in mortal mind by the thoughts ever recurring to one's self, by conversation about the body, and by the expectation of perpetual pleasure or pain from it; and this education is at the expense of spiritual growth." What is it, indeed, but this false education which continually limits us with the arguments that because we have always partaken of a certain article of food, and have cultivated certain tastes and aversions, we cannot face about and make an effort to reform? It was Shakespeare who wrote, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Must we forever be held to the routine of last year, or even last month? It was this same stubborn, unwilling temperament which prompted the children of Israel to long for the fleshpots of Egypt—the very fleshpots in which lurks the serpent of bondage to matter. Had they but realized that their every need was being supplied by the loving Father-Mother God, although they were in what seemed a veritable wilderness, their eyes would have been opened to behold the wonderful simplicity and sufficiency of their daily manna.

Let us consider for a moment what it is that makes the fleshpots seem so attractive. Is it not the false belief that pleasure is obtained through the physical senses, the senses which deny the truth that "joy is spiritual," as Mrs. Eddy tells us on page 265 of Science and Health, rather than by radical obedience to the First Commandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Inasmuch, therefore, as sensualism is inherent in the false claim of mortal mind, the tendency to eat in order to gratify the senses acknowledges the temporary triumph of self-indulgence over reason, virtually enlisting on the side of evil in its attempt to weaken man's God-given dominion over the material senses. We do well to observe the Master's admonition: "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on."

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