Good Times

To students of Christian Science there comes to-day a powerful challenge for correct thinking. The whole world believes itself to be suffering under an economic depression, and that the so-called "hard times" ensuing must be accompanied by privations, reversals of fortunes, and even suffering. The frightened world halfway admits that the depression is psychological or mental; the Christian Scientist knows that it is a state of mind. Since the so-termed depression is a state of mind, it can be modified or removed by adjusting one's thought. Paradoxical as it may seem, in this time of apparently little business, there is for the Christian Scientist a great deal of business. It is for duty to maintain the high level of pure scientific thought and demonstrate by right thinking that hard times are unreal usurpers in the kingdom of God and man. Mrs. Eddy, on page 105 of "Miscellaneous Writings," tersely epitomizes the whole of Christian Science thinking in this unequivocal sentence: "Because God is Mind, and this Mind is good, all is good and all is Mind." Since all is good, then the only bad is in thinking otherwise; all our suffering, sinning, sickness, and hard times result from neglect to realize the absolute truth of this fundamental statement of divine science: "Because God is Mind, and this Mind is good, all is good and all is Mind."

Mankind has obstinately refused to obey the injunction of our wise Master: "Let the dead bury their dead." They are prone to be slaves to the past, to allow their lives to be regulated by foolish precedents and unscientific beliefs of forefathers. Because after former disturbances and wars there have followed periods of commercial dullness and inactivity, the majority of people try to instill into the general public the belief that such depression is a result of law invariably observed; as a consequence, the entire world may seem to yield for a time to the ungodlike forces of timidity, fear, and limitation. Christian Scientists know that the only law is God's law, and that this law operates in order that the omnipotence of Mind may be reflected in all times and in all places. There is no place but God's place, and no time but God's time. All time belongs to God and has for its single purpose the unfoldment and operation of the law of God, good. Clearly, then, there is no time but God's time, no law but God's law. Yielding to the belief that the law of perfection has given was temporarily to a law of imperfection implies a belief in an imperfect God and an imperfect law of God. But we must not swerve a hair's breadth from our fundamental precepts; we must be ever conscious that there is one power, good; that this omnipotent power expresses itself in only one law, the law of absolute, harmonious good; that this law has no concept of place or time, but is eternally operative, yielding not for one moment to any lesser law.

A Christian Scientist should be ever on guard to deny any lodging place in his mentality for thoughts of limitation and privation. He must realize that whatever is rightfully his cannot be denied him; he must realize that time is a human concept unknown to God, and that man's bugbear of hard times is a mere figment of the mind. Whenever the suggestion of limitation or unemployment tries to enter our thought, we should flood our whole mentality with gratitude and thanksgiving, with an unflinching realization of the eternal, inexhaustible source of all real things, drowning the unwelcome invaders before they gain a foothold. Isaiah voices the sublime hope of all the ages when he declares that perfect peace is ours if our minds are stayed on God. That is the only solution for our seeming hard times; we must stay our minds on God and His law. Robert Louis Stevenson says that man should armor himself with mental triple brass: courage, fearlessness of the future, and freedom form the shackles of the past. It is this triple brass, girded tight with scientific understanding, that we must wear constantly. We must face the present with the God-inspired knowledge that all is good; the past and future matter not, the only verity is the present,—God's time.