Article June 24, 1922 Issue

Spiritual Equipment

REUBEN POGSON

To watch a raw recruit and an old soldier joining their regiment as they receive their equipment from the quartermaster's stores is to get a lesson in the value of a good equipment. The trained man will scrutinize with skillful eye each article; and, if defective, he will—granting that the corporal is tractable—try to get it changed there and then. He will see that his belt is long enough to go outside his overcoat for heavy marching order in winter. His shoulder straps, buckles, pouches, must be so that they are comfortable when continuously worn. He will use his powers of tactfulness and persuasion in order to get boots to his liking. The raw recruit serves as a supposed law of compensation to the corporal, who dumps all the doubtful articles on him, rapidly calls out and checks the list, and immediately dismisses him. Even on the military plane there are things that can be bought without money, the purchasing medium being experience!

On pages 359 and 360 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, there are depicted two individuals, the one drawing his equipment from the stores of divine Mind, the other from the mortal, or fleshly, so-called mind. There we read: "One says: 'I have spiritual ideals, indestructible and glorious. When others see them as I do, in their true light and loveliness,—and know that these ideals are real and eternal because drawn from Truth,—they will find that nothing is lost, and all is won, by a right estimate of what is real.' " The other individual chooses his equipment from the stores of mortal belief, where the ideals, made up of old doctrines and human opinions, are temporal. It is obvious that under the test of struggle the latter soldier will be liable to go down. The mere finity of his equipment will tend to decide this. There are two lines in "Hamlet" which tersely summarize the false belief that underlies the defeat of mortals:—

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