Article November 24, 1923 Issue

Receiving and Giving versus Getting and Withholding

LEONARD T. CARNEY

To the earnest Christian Scientist, striving daily for a higher understanding of Truth, the words "giving," "getting," "receiving," "withholding," have a contrasted meaning which enlarges with continued thought. Giving may be said to mean, spiritually, the bestowal, in thought, of truth or good; while getting signifies obtaining, acquiring, holding. Christian Science is concerned with giving expression to spiritual ideas, which are in the divine Mind in illimitable profusion. The one who is thus engaged is always receiving in return; for his consciousness is open, because of his desire to express good. Contrariwise, the continual effort to get, indicating a deficiency or absence of good, results in closing the human consciousness to the ideas of divine Mind.

At the beginning, we must know that we cannot demonstrate Truth with a limited, corporeal, or selfish concept of the One who is limitless, incorporeal, divine Love. Every moment of our day, and every portion of our consciousness, must be filled with the psalm of praise articulating what God is and what He means to man. God is immeasurable, immutable Mind,—the only Mind; He is invariable Love, our Father-Mother; He is omnipresent, truth-giving Spirit; He is the Supreme Being, without beginning or end.

The creative activity of God, or Mind, is manifested in the expression of Himself; and this expression is the universe of ideas. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (pp. 502, 503) Mrs. Eddy says, "This creation consists of the unfolding of spiritual ideas and their identities, which are embraced in the infinite Mind and forever reflected." Idea, in Christian Science, is that which reflects the true nature of Mind or God; and, therefore, idea is the result of the activity of God, or Mind. The real man being God's idea has, therefore, but to manifest, to express, God. To contemplate the lowly spring of water emerging from a mossy bank, dropping into the clear pool, and thence through the valley below, refreshing all on its way, gives us a helpful thought on man's relation to God. Neither choked by flood nor deprived of its supply, it unceasingly gives all it has, receiving again in full measure. What a transformation comes to one physically and mentally when he begins to grasp, understandingly, that man's sole business is that of giving forth what he receives from God! One necessarily abandons the old way of striving to get for himself health, harmony, and abundance, which is the world's way, the way of matter, of self-will, leading to passion, sensualism, destruction, war, death. The reason for the real man's existence becomes clear: it is to give expression to and to declare God. Thus man is indispensable to God.

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