Article September 25, 1920 Issue

The Infinite

CHARLES E. ANDERSON

On page vii of the Preface to "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy writes, "To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings." To thousands of aching hearts these words have brought relief and comfort. The skeptic, to be sure, is likely to catch up the phrase, "sustaining infinite," and maintain stoutly that to lean on the infinite is to lean on the unknown and unknowable, and hence on mere superstition; but when one reaches certain point of physical or mental suffering, he catches a glimpse of something beyond the cold reasoning of the philosopher; and then he does find himself leaning on the "sustaining infinite."

The word "infinite," which means boundless, has also had occasionally the popular meaning "vague" or "obscure." The vague limits everything. In the outward universe it confines everything within the narrow boundaries of time and space. What is going to happen to-morrow? What lies hidden withing the past? What is taking place now beyond yonder hill? These are questions which the vague human mind can scarcely answer. Within, also, the dark abysses of intangible thought would supposedly bar expansion on every side. This so-called mind doubts, fears, errs, lies, and contradicts itself; it works general confusion and destruction.

The boundless, on the contrary, needless to say, is not vague; it is consciousness expressed—boundless consciousness. It is here and now. "To-day is big with blessings;" no false and self-contradictory standpoints of time and space are permitted to stand in its way. It knows all because it knows itself. Likewise, it knows naught but absolute harmony. It is self-existent and it is self-complete.

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