Article November 26, 1921 Issue

Right Endeavor

LILLIAN E. DAVIS

"Seeking is not sufficient. It is striving that enables us to enter." So says Mrs. Eddy on page 10 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures;" and on page 323 she says, "This strife consists in the endeavor to forsake error of every kind and to possess no other consciousness but good." Now, what is endeavor, and are we endeavoring continually "to forsake error of every kind"? A dictionary gives as definitions of endeavor: "To attempt; try; strive; struggle; essay; aim; seek." All of these of words imply positive activity, not a passive waiting for something to come to pass. The endeavor to forsake error is not merely acknowledging God's allness and error's nothingness and then waiting for something to come to pass. The endeavor to forsake error is not merely acknowledging God's allness and error's nothingness and then waiting for something to happen to prove our acknowledgment true. We must go further and give proof that we really believe what we affirm. We must act in accordance with our statments. Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health (p. 264), "We must look where we would walk, and we must act as possessing all power from Him in whom we have our being."

"We must act as possessing all power," and yet one not infrequently hears it said in reference to attempting to break a wrong habit: "I am afraid I may use human will power." As a result, the fearing one does not advance very far toward forsaking the error. Such a one need not fear that he may use human will power, because human will does not want it to be broken, and never can do anything. Because there is only one Mind, the divine Mind, there can be only one will, the divine will. The only will power there is, therefore, is the will and power of God, of which man is the reflection. The realization of this truth heals the claim of human will power, so called.

Why does one wish to forsake error? Is it not because he knows it is not in accordance with the divine will? Then, in desiring to forsake it, or any error, he is reflecting the divine will. In order to believe that one is using human will power, he must believe he has a mind apart from God, which is capable of willing. The one who is attempting to rid himself of error through Christian Science can never allow himself to start from so impossible a premise. It is God's will for man to do right, and doing right is reflecting God. We read in Science and Health (p. 448), "It is Christian Science to do right, and nothing short of right-doing has claim to the name." If the doing of right in some particular instance involves a struggle, we should not be afraid to go forward, for, in the words of one of our hymns, "His is the power by which we act." When we will to do right or desire to do right we are merely reflecting the divine will, and the next step is to do right even though it entails such a wrestling with error as Jacob had and such a going forward as Moses accomplished at the Red Sea.

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