Article November 24, 1923 Issue

"Love is our refuge"

ALLAN CARSON

In the Preface to "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. ix) Mrs. Eddy says: "A certain apothegm of Talmudical philosopher suits my sense of doing good. It reads thus: 'The noblest charity is to prevent a man from accepting charity; and the best alms are to show and to enable a man to dispense with alms." It might also be said, The best refuge is the understanding that since God is infinite good, there is nothing from which we need a refuge! In her Poems (p. 4) Mrs. Eddy has put forward the further teaching which has been accepted by countless thinkers, that "Love is our refuge." And how is Love our refuge? By revealing the root of the trouble, and destroying that which makes a refuge seem necessary; namely, the false belief that there is a power opposed to God, divine Love.

Christian Science accepts and elucidates the Bible teaching that God is All-in-all; that there is no Mind, no Life, no power, no presence, but God and His ideas. The Scriptures state very clearly that "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good;" and that "without him was not any thing made that was made." This being true, from what, then, do we need a refuge? From nothing but the false beliefs in an existence apart from God. These erroneous beliefs have their root and supposed life in that which Paul called the "carnal mind" and Mrs. Eddy named "mortal mind." What is necessary, then, to lift us beyond the need of a refuge is the destruction of this so-called "carnal" or "mortal" mind, and the adoption of the Mind of Christ.

When we contemplate the glorious changes for good which this adoption ushers into our lives, our hearts go out in unbounded gratitude to God for the agencies He uses in conveying this blessed truth to a weary, sick, discordant world. When the truth that "in my Father's house are many mansions," comes to us in all its sublimity, broadness, and beauty, it will still forever the boisterous supposititious arguments of mortal belief that we can lack any good thing. God's mansions are for us; they are free; they are not mortgaged; and thieves do not break into them and steal; and more than all this, they are eternal. They are created for us; and the loving Father is always tendering us His most gracious invitation to come in and abide. Let us go in, then, and make our abode in that mansion where Love reigns supreme. Let us have done with the false beliefs that God's child can lack a home, and find refuge in the understanding that "our sufficiency is of God."

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