Editorial March 26, 1921 Issue

The Immediate Possibility

Gustavus S. Paine

In the study of Christian Science one learns that there are actually no impossibilities. Most people know that Christ Jesus said, "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you." Yet, believing in limitations as inevitable, many people have submitted with cringing to seeming handicaps that they abhor. The fear that cows and hampers is the very opposite of the faith, or understanding, that removes the mountain. How to overcome cowering unbelief with the sureness of Principle, Christian Science is showing to the many day by day. The sturdy recognition, without human outlining, and in spite of any seeming, that "with God all things are possible" is the right beginning. Then as the seeker continues to turn in the right direction, the truly scientific trust in Principle supersedes any forlorn unbelief and proves that real living in Mind, not in matter, is unlimited now and always.

Consistent practice in accord with Principle breaks through the seeming limits of human endeavor and achievement and reveals the infinite possibility of the divine Mind and its manifestation. The realm of infinite consciousness and its activity is, indeed, real, solid, and tangible, as no merely human sense of things could ever be. When one reasons persistently in accord with Principle, the appearing of the spiritual actuality may seem, to borrow Walter Pater's words, "like the breaking in of the solid world upon one, amid the flimsy fictions of a dream." On page 261 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy tells us, "Breaking away from the mutations of time and sense, you will neither lose the solid objects and ends of life nor your own identity." Again later, on page 371, she declares: "No impossible thing do I ask when urging the claims of Christian Science; but because this teaching is in advance of the age, we should not deny our need of its spiritual unfoldment. Mankind will improve through Science and Christianity. The necessity for uplifting the race is father to the fact that Mind can do it; for Mind can impart purity instead of impurity, strength instead of weakness, and health instead of disease. Truth is an alterative in the entire system, and can make it 'every whit whole.'"

If some particular improvement in one's condition has seemed needful and yet especially difficult, that sense of limitation is an excellent opportunity for the immediate and uncompromising realization of Mind's activity as infinite. Often one must deliberately determine that now is the time for the operation of Principle once and for all to break through and dispel the false belief. In such a case, one must act fearlessly in conformity with the intelligent inspiration. The wise and fearless doing of one righteous act that seems impossible opens the way for further freedom. Of course this decisive refusal to be bound by beliefs of matter, whether chronic or acute, cannot be an exercise of mere human will. It must be the doing of the divine will through the realization of its operation as the present possibility.

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