God First

It has been truly said that "the battle of our life is won and heaven begun when we can say 'Thy will be done,' " and when indeed we can assert with an honest sense of self-surrender, "Father, Thy will be done; I am weary of my own," we can perhaps have some realization of what Jesus knew in all its completeness when he said, "I and my Father are one." Mrs. Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 55), "Whosoever layeth his earthly all on the altar of divine Science, drinketh of Christ's cup now, and is endued with the spirit and power of Christian healing;" and repeatedly throughout her writings this same thought is vigorously expressed. She well knew that halfhearted service is of little avail, but that to be worthy one must leave all for Christ, and this means the surrender of all belief that there is life or reality in matter. Is not this the fast that we have chosen? And as we see the sick restored to health, the sinful regenerated and set free, do we not earnestly thank God for such blessed opportunities?

"Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul," and it is through the subjugation of material plans and desires that we finally acquire a broader state of mind, which counts as gain only that which gives a clearer perception of the infinite God. Through earnest seeking and the confident claiming of all good as our eternal heritage, we gradually cease to gravitate earthward and begin to breathe the purer atmosphere of spiritual understanding. Oh, the pity of it, that it should seem so difficult at times and so extremely slow of accomplishment! How we hug to ourselves some cherished plan that seems to our limited vision so wholly good that we are sure it must needs be fulfilled, and how sadly we grieve when our human planning comes to naught. Through many generations we have been carefully trained to look in the wrong direction for health and happiness and are proving deplorably true this quaint bit of philosophy: "The further you go on a wrong road, the further you must walk back." Uselessly we strive so long as we act through a mistaken sense of good; for often we advance Spiritward through the defeat of the very things we are clamoring for. When we learn to let God rule, asking to do only that which He will have us do, relinquishing the delusive baubles to which our human fingers so tenaciously cling, we find a mental harmony which can be gained in no other way, because that has been the law of Life from the beginning, and through Christian Science it is again being taught and established upon the earth.

Sincerely longing to lay aside all material beliefs for the Christ, Truth, often thinking, doubtless, that everything there is to give has already been given, one comes at length to the point where he realizes that he has traveled but a limited distance, after all, along the road of self-abnegation. This is a hopeful state for progress, since they only are wise who know that they know nothing materially. Like children outgrowing their toys, those of spiritually larger growth are constantly putting aside more of the "old man" as his seeming importance lessens, until they attain the understanding that there is but one thing needful, and that is to love God comprehendingly, "warring no more," to quote Mrs. Eddy (Science and Health, p. 140), "over the corporeality, but rejoicing in the affluence of our God."

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The Mandate of Mind
July 19, 1919
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