Editorial October 15, 1921 Issue

The Qualities that Serve God

Gustavus S. Paine

Infinite Mind with its infinite manifestation is the present reality instead of any human counterfeit that may seem either pleasant or disagreeable, praiseworthy or reprehensible. To reiterate this fact is to tell the old, old story of the Messiahship which Christ Jesus demonstrated through his replacement of false conditions of thought with righteousness. The Christ, indeed, infinite in spiritual quality that expresses absolute Principle, is the remedy for every defect or inharmony, because the Christ, the spiritual idea in Mind, is the reality of which any human sense of things, any mortal characteristic, is but the suppositional opposite.

In the light of such a sweeping statement as this, consider some qualities that have been deemed blameworthy by society in general or by certain people who have encountered them in untoward circumstances. Aggressiveness, for instance, has often been thought of as a quality to be suppressed rather than encouraged. The student of Christian Science, however, needs to turn at once to the divine Mind to see what this one Mind knows of aggressiveness. Offhand, one might say that the divine Mind knows nothing of it, and yet its positive nature indicates reality, for Christian Science annihilates nothing. Aggressiveness, even humanly considered, is that quality of thought which is constantly putting self forward. The aggressiveness which the divine Mind knows is, then, the unfoldment of the true self, of spiritual consciousness. This is the true going forward, the advance or progress of infinite Mind infinitely manifesting itself. In one sense, of course, there can never be any more of infinite Mind and its manifestation than there is right now; but the word "infinite" is boundless in its meaning, and infinity can never be comprehended within any human concepts.

The false sense of aggressiveness, then, must give way to the truth; but in the process nothing is lost, for the divine Mind requires vigor of expression and maintains it. What has seemed wrong has always been merely mortal mind's misinterpretation of the truth, and fortunately there really never has been any mortal mind to misinterpret the reality. So-called mortal mind is but suppositional opposite of the one divine Mind which is all there is. That which applies to aggressiveness applies also to other qualities, for instead of any supposed human characteristic one needs to see what the divine Mind knows. The infinite, spiritual manifestation of Mind is altogether good and satisfying, cannot be limited by any human sense of things, and unfolds boundlessly. This unlimited manifestation is all that the divine Mind knows and is altogether unlike any limited, mortal concept.

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