Article March 6, 1920 Issue

The average human being lives so entirely within the...

The Christian Science Monitor

The average human being lives so entirely within the scope of the material senses that the subject of man's spiritual individuality receives scant attention. If he thinks of it at all, it is usually to picture it as a finite personality to be sublimated by death. The possibility of exchanging, or putting off, material selfhood for spiritual individuality dawns upon consciousness only as existence is viewed from the standpoint of divine Science, which reveals man's true selfhood as an idea in Principle, and teaches the way to demonstrate it. Material sense, being the supposed intelligence of a carnal mind opposed to Spirit, will not and cannot aid a man in finding his true selfhood, for it is the business of material sense to keep the human being befogged in materiality and separated, in belief, from Spirit.

Only through spiritual sense are the realities of being discerned, and any man at any time may have recourse to spiritual sense through which to grasp eternal facts; for spiritual sense, being the intelligence of man in the likeness of God, is ever present and available. "Absorbed in material selfhood," Mrs. Eddy explains in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 91), "we discern and reflect but faintly the substance of Life or Mind. The denial of material selfhood aids the discernment of man's spiritual and eternal individuality, and destroys the erroneous knowledge gained from matter or through what are termed the material senses." It has been the belief in matter as a reality, and consequently in a material selfhood, that has moved the Cains from the beginning to murder the Abels and other Cains. To love another as one's self is a sanity that comes to a man only when he discovers and demonstrates his true individuality as a son of God; for in that discovery he finds that what is true of his own individuality is true also of every other individuality. He has found the divine Principle through which the good of one becomes the good of all. He loves the true individuality of others enough to strive to see it as the only reality, even in the midst of trying human circumstances, because he has first seen his own spiritual individuality as a son of God and loves its beauty and perfection sufficiently to consecrate his endeavors to the demonstration of it, to a realization which excludes the admission of evil anywhere. It was this knowledge of his true selfhood that inspired and enabled Jesus the Christ to devote himself to the service of good and the consequent overcoming of evil. "I know whence I came, and whither I go," he told the materialists; "but ye cannot tell whence I come, and whither I go. Ye judge after the flesh."

To the man who is engrossed in materiality, and perhaps as a result is suffering from all manner of discords, the declaration that man is really and only spiritual may seem visionary. All his physical senses uphold his belief that spiritual being is anything but a present actuality; but it is this physical sense that holds him in the experience of discord. The material senses are ignorant of God and cannot be expected to perceive the reality of Spirit and spiritual harmony. Let a man begin to assert his spiritual individuality, however, and what happens? All the power of omnipotence substantiates his legitimate claim to sonship with God. "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit," Paul declared, "that we are the children of God." Upon even a human sense of life the immediate effect of thus claiming man's spiritual birthright is to bring this human sense under the rule of perfection and harmony as the natural state of man, and, therefore, to lessen the tyranny of materiality. "According to Christian Science," Mrs. Eddy writes in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 104), "perfection is normal,—not miraculous. Clothed, and in its right Mind, man's individuality is sinless, deathless, harmonious, eternal. His materiality, clad in a false mentality, wages feeble fight with his individuality,—his physical senses with his spiritual senses. The latter move in God's grooves of Science: the former revolve in their own orbits, and must stand the friction of false selfhood until self-destroyed."

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

The average human being lives so entirely within the...

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access