Editorial January 29, 1921 Issue

Cheerful Waiting

Gustavus S. Paine

Rightly understood, waiting is much more than a looking to the future for the development of good. The true idea includes vigilant service. Thus it is not really an abstaining from action, but it is a doing in the now of what Principle requires now, with the comprehension that infinite Principle uses all of eternity for unfoldment. Of course eternity is not a mere future, supposed to follow the to-day of mortality. In fact, to the divine Mind there is no division of experience into future, past, and present. Infinite Mind knows all good as ever present actuality. When one understands that immortal man lives in Mind and not in matter, one rejoices in the possibilities of the present eternity which Mind knows.

"Hope," as Pope said, "springs eternal in the human breast," because people are dissatisfied with the human sense of things and look for something better ahead of them, without discerning that the only way in which human living can be improved is by a complete turning away from the earthly seeming to divine Principle and its manifestation. It is by the melting away of human belief before the divine reality that, paradoxically speaking, such a belief is improved. The true waiting on Principle is much more than the ordinary sense of hope. As discernment of the right way is revealed through Christian Science, the vain hope that mortality may be perfected is replaced with the sureness of man's present immortality in Mind. Thus human dissatisfaction and human hope together give way to the satisfying understanding of Truth.

At a time of human pessimism and cynicism, of reaction after war, of fear and disgust, it is not mere expectation of better times to come that needed. Instead, it is the discernment of the true universe as spiritual here and now that encourages patient continuance in well-doing. Since the real creation is altogether orderly, just as the producing divine Mind is orderly, one needs to rejoice in every broadening sense of order which indicates that disorder is inevitably disappearing. The seeming reluctance of mortality, with its supposed destructiveness, to subside into its original void, while immortality unfolds as actual experience, may involve a sense of conflict. This, however, is only a false and temporary belief, claiming to counterfeit the action of infinite Mind which is always vigorous. What if the supposition that there are many minds, battling one with another, does seem to multiply crimes and lawlessness? The student of Christian Science must remain serene in his understanding of the divine harmony in order to be of the most service. As Mrs. Eddy says, beginning on page 96 of Science and Health, "During this final conflict, wicked minds will endeavor to find means by which to accomplish more evil; but those who discern Christian Science will hold crime in check. They will aid in the ejection of error. They will maintain law and order, and cheerfully await the certainty of ultimate perfection."

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