Article September 25, 1920 Issue

Time

KATHRINE JONES

If time, as a human concept, is unknown to divine Mind, it is unknown to that man whose only Ego is the divine Mind, and human beings, laying off their mortality, must turn to divine consciousness that realizes infinity and immortality. The apprehension of infinity does not, however, come through the study of human philosophy, but rather dawns gradually and calmly, as one is prepared to receive revelation through prayer, consecration, and spiritual activity.

The fitful, purposeless, restless movement of mortal mind is healed by the divine Mind. Exchanging sensuous dreaming for God–directed thinking, the student of Christian Science finds himself more and more thinking in the present tense. He rests in the consciousness of ever present Love, and so is constantly endeavoring to realize that divine Love heals and protects, that good is, and that man is in heaven, harmonious, at peace. If thought reverts to the past, he realizes that the past is healed; if he considers the future, it is only to know that Love will take care of it; but it is in the present that he really lives. Hour by hour, moment by moment, such a one depends on divine Love for guidance and inspiration. Instead of looking forward with apprehension to some dreaded circumstance, he realizes to the full the protection of the present moment, knowing that by so doing his future hours will unfold normally as an expression of God's government,—concordant, secure.

The wonderful moments of illumination that come thus when it is clearly seen that evil is unreal, are sometimes allowed to be overcast and lost by the student's becoming troubled about the past ages' belief in evil. "Even if evil is being proved daily in Christian Science to be unreal," the tempter argues, "there have been countless ages when men believed in the reality of evil. Does not that age–long belief have a depressing, hypnotic influence on the present?" Here let the student consider the comparative effects of a lie believed for one day by one person, and of one believed a million years by a million persons. When the one believed for so long a time is discovered to be a lie, it exerts no more power in the present than the lie believed for a day. Mrs. Eddy urges us not to honor error in any way. It is only the bowing down to error, the fearing and indulging it, that gives it its suppositional power. Time, however ancient, cannot invest it with what it cannot possess.

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