Article May 29, 1920 Issue

Rest

EDITH ALLEN WATTS

To be at rest is to know God. When one knows the allness, completeness of good, one ceases to anticipate or entertain erroneous suggestions. Mortal mind, in its continued contemplation of suppositional error, has writhed and suffered in the throes of its own imaginings, portraying those false pictures upon the human body as sin, sickness, pain, death. Such thoughts are not conducive to the state of mind which Webster defines as rest—"freedom from anything that wearies, disturbs, or troubles; peace of mind."

While Christ Jesus was beset with the multiplied agonies of a sin-cursed world, he saw and knew only God as good. Evil beliefs could not possess his thought. When they came they found nothing in him which responded to their subtle insinuations. One does not connect the thought of unrest with Jesus—nor of fear, worry, nervousness, doubt, dismay. Throughout the New Testament records, poise, quiet, rest, and confidence in God constituted the Master's attitude.

Physical weariness accompanies mental unrest. It is the result of wandering in the wilderness of human doubt and uncertainty without an established basis of good from which to proceed. When, weary of the unrest of mortal mind, we turn to God, however, Christian Science enables us to establish a definite basis whereon we may rest with scientific confidence. This basis is wholesome activity. As Mrs. Eddy implies when she says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," beginning on page 519, "The highest and sweetest rest, even from a human standpoint, is in holy work." In the same paragraph she writes, "God rests in action." This action is manifest in the healing of the sick and the sinner, and the raising of the dead. Mental unrest is constituted of beliefs of material existence. So the true rest is the understanding of spiritual existence and blessedness.

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