Article August 20, 1921 Issue

No Good or Bad Luck

GEOFFREY HAMLYN

The fact that God is Principle, "with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning," does away at once with any possibility of either good or bad luck; for belief in luck is belief in chance, and belief in chance presupposes, whether the believer realizes it or not, belief in a fickle or possibly an absentee deity. The hold which the belief in good or bad luck seems to exercise over Christendom is remarkable, and one is often astonished at the extent to which professed Christians are dominated by superstition. The fact that God, good, is Principle involves the correlated fact that every thought, and consequently every action, in accord with Principle brings the harmony of God's kingdom with it, whilst every thought, and consequently every action, which departs from Principle, forfeits the harmony which belongs to Principle. "The sinner," writes Mrs. Eddy, on page 266 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," "makes his own hell by doing evil, and the saint his own heaven by doing right," which is only another way of saying, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." The Bible teems with such pronouncements, and there is reason to believe that the myriad so-called laws of superstition would have had no chance of creeping into Christian belief had not the true concept of God as both Principle and Love been lost, and Christians therefore been largely ignorant as to which thoughts were in line with Principle and which were not. The crux of the whole question is to know God aright. And this is just where Christian Science comes to our help, for it explains God with a comprehensiveness and precision which revolutionizes our whole concept of Him.

"God," explains Mrs. Eddy, on page 465 of Science and Health, "is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love." The infinity of Spirit or Mind makes impossible the reality of matter; the infinity of Life makes impossible the reality of sickness and death; in short, the infinity of good makes impossible the reality of evil. The understanding of this demolishes that "tree of the knowledge of good and evil," that belief in a power opposed to God, good, against which God is represented in the allegory of Genesis as warning man. The fact is that the belief in good or bad luck is merely one expression of "the knowledge of good and evil," and it is only as we supersede this so-called knowledge by the understanding of the omnipotence and reality of good alone that any bad luck we may have seemed to experience will disappear; and it is well to remember that we make evil unreal to ourselves only in the proportion that we cease to think it or to act it. As the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science puts it, on page 167 of Science and Health, "Our proportionate admission of the claims of good or of evil determines the harmony of our existence,—our health, our longevity, and our Christianity."

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