Article April 8, 1922 Issue

True Self-Respect

ELIZABETH C. ADAMS

It may be said of certain persons that they wear their shield of vanity inside out. They present to the world, and even to themselves, the side of the shield which bears the words "self-condemnation;" but the real name, which the world does not often suspect or the wearer always realize, is worn next the heart. Its name is "vanity." Sometimes it is spiritual vanity or vanity as regards spirituality, and sometimes it is intellectual vanity; but in either case it leads to every kind of misery.

It was a fortunate day for one such person when she was induced by a Christian Science worker to take off her shield and examine it on both sides. She discovered then that, instead of thinking like a modest, sincerely humble child of God, she had been trying to protect herself against adverse criticism by rating herself as low as possible, unconsciously reckoning on ingratiating herself with the worldly mind by letting it feel superior to her. Moreover, she had taken this attitude so long that she had come to feel inferior, and had become hypersensitive, full of inhibitions and fears, and entirely lacking in confidence.

It was a patient Christian Science practitioner, again, who introduced this woman to her real self,—the pure and perfect idea of God, possessing no intelligence apart from God, but in Him reflecting all intelligence; possessing no goodness apart from God, but in Him being perfect. Gradually, a great peace began to creep into this worn and weary heart, motives became purer, vision became clearer, confidence grew; and with these came ability and self-respect, the respect due to every one of God's ideas,—to one as much as to another, God being "no respecter of persons." The relief which came to this suffering heart might well be expressed in the graphic words of the fortieth psalm, "He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings."

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