Article January 1, 1921 Issue

Causation

BABBETTE LEAVY

If one stops to analyze what we may seemingly have given reality to as causation, it will be found that effect has been taking the place of cause, and thus, the beginning from a wrong premise has led to a false conclusion. Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 566), "As the children of Israel were guided triumphantly through the Red Sea, the dark ebbing and flowing tides of human fear,—as they were led through the wilderness, walking wearily through the great desert of human hopes, and anticipating the promised joy,—so shall the spiritual idea guide all right desires in their passage from sense to Soul, from a material sense of existence to the spiritual, up to the glory prepared for them who love God." As we study Christian Science we find that there is a rock, a sheltering place where we can be safe from "the dark ebbing and flowing tides of human fear," and that is in the understanding that God, good, is causation. Now let us see how that fact is going to solve our problem.

Suppose that in our home life a member of the family has seemingly had an experience in which anger is asking us to believe in its reality. Do we become affected by it and believe it "causation"? By so doing, it would not be helping, but adding a heavier burden to bear upon our brother man, and so we come back to our cause: God, good, is power, good is action. Is anger an emanation of good? No; therefore it is not an effect; then since necessarily anger is not an activity of good, let us mentally declare that anger has no power, no Principle, no action, has no voice, is therefore speechless, and we have no ears to hear it. God, good, is all that governs, and there is nothing but God, nothing but good.

Have we ever considered how subtly misery seems to act? We listen to a sad tale in which our brother seems to be a victim. Whence came misery? What caused it? Suppose you had a dream in which you lost all that you held dear, and you were going through a seemingly hard time, would not some one in the room try to rouse you out of that mesmeric suffering? He would not try to go into your dream and push this scene from your consciousness, but would awaken you from this false dream world in which you found yourself, and so bring you back again to your normal state and you would be grateful for being lifted out of suffering. In this way we can at all times lovingly show that since good is causation, there can be no misery, no evil, no sorrow.

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