Article November 1, 1919 Issue

Individual Salvation

CARRIE L. BOSS

IN Christian Science it is made very plain that the process of salvation is individual before it can be universal, and that one who is conscientiously applying his knowledge of this Science will not attempt to work out anyone's salvation but his own. This individual spiritual illumination, however, does bless all who come within its radius. We often hear it said by a young student of Christian Science: "I hope some day I may be able to help others. I should so love to heal the sick." This desire to serve is both normal and worthy of development, but the place to begin is within one's own consciousness, by healing one's self of the sick and sinful thoughts that are claiming to be one's own. "Physician, heal thyself" is still the fundamental demand which must be compiled with before one is enabled to heal his brother. "First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." By overcoming the suggestions of sickness, anger, jealousy, resentment, and the like, that present themselves daily and hourly to one's own thinking, one is surely doing healing work in that he is destroying the thoughts that eventually would manifest themselves as sickness. When one has overcome a belief of sin or of sickness seeking expression within one's self, he need not fear inability to overcome a similar belief, wherever it may claim to appear. A false belief is certainly no more real in its attempted manifestation of itself as a so-called patient than as a part of one's self. All are in reality the ideas of God, and any argument that opposes the perfection of any of God's ideas is untrue, hence powerless, causeless, without effect.

Mrs. Eddy makes it very plain that Jesus healed the sick by accepting only perfection for man, when she says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 476): "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick." And so we, too, by keeping our thought fixed steadfastly on perfect God and perfect man, refusing to accept as real any suggestions as to a sick or sinful man, are surely gaining the spiritual understanding which does heal the sick.

The windowpane is sure to let in the sun's light if it be kept clean; in like manner, we become transparencies for Truth as thought is cleansed of all error. Individual duty, therefore, is to eliminate from one's thinking all that is not Godlike. This includes the reversal and destruction of every lie about perfect God, perfect man, and perfect universe. Can one therefore afford to believe for a single moment in the reality of an imperfect person, thing, or condition? One's work in destroying any false concept is to lift up thought so completely to the reality of being that the right idea asserts itself spontaneously. This activity of right thinking is the activity of divine Mind; in other words, is God acting, and is endued with the infinite power of Truth to destroy instantly any false concept.

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