Article June 21, 1919 Issue

Remembering Our Work

CASSIUS M. LOOMIS

According to the teachings of Christian Science every righteous performance meets its exact reward sometime, somewhere. Of this fact none need doubt, for God's universal love and bestowals never become inoperative. Practitioners, lecturers, teachers, or Sunday school workers—all those, in fact, who long to impart to others the blessings of Truth—are given by right of especial fitness something to do. How best to perform this work so that it will bear the maximum fruitage is a question that confronts us all. Our hearts abound in the hope that the lame shall walk, that the blind shall see and the deaf hear, and that the sinner shall be saved from himself and his many miseries. This devout prayer we do not voice to the world, for it goes forth to the Father from the inner sanctuary where we worship.

The practitioner who can do his work well, unselfishly, and with no specific eagerness as to results, looks for success always; and with each victory gained, new evidence of the quickening spirit of Truth is revealed. We should not, however, be unduly elated over a work well done, nor should we be cast down because more and better work is needed to accomplish favorable results. There are obvious reasons for this. In the first place, it is not the practitioner who, of himself, does the healing. His office is a subordinate one, for the humblest worker turns to God as the great Physician with a faith that never for a moment doubts. One of the writer's first observations after taking up a scientific study of the Bible was to note the fact that Jesus of Nazareth never seemed to give a second thought to any case of healing he performed, however remarkable it appeared to others. His thought was so gifted with the power of action—never entertaining a doubt or the slightest fear—that when a false belief was destroyed in the patient's thought, the disease vanished quickly, because it had never existed as a spiritual reality and had no place in the Master's consciousness. Why should we not all work with this same precision of thought and unalloyed assurance?

Some students, young in the work, who have taken up the practice of healing, grow grave with a sense of responsibility, and feel weighted down with the seeming perversity of error. Was it so with the seventy whom Jesus sent forth to test their understanding through healing? So great was their faith and so obedient were their thoughts and acts that they returned with songs of praise, declaring that even the devils were subject unto them. A joyous heart is never moved to somber reflections. Heaviness of spirit comes largely from the habit of remembering the things of the past rather than forgetting them in order to fit ourselves for the work that is given us to do as the days go by. To respect our work and to employ our best energies in its performance is always commendable, but the earnest and thorough worker is never anxious about results. Self-adulation is as harmful as a secret belief in our inability to heal. Paul writes: "I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

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