Article July 28, 1923 Issue

Spontaneity

FLORENCE ANNIE GUBBINS

Life is expressed in the forever unfoldment of spiritual good. Mortal existence is the supposititious opposite of this, its essential characteristics being material repetition and routine. The scribes and Pharisees instigated and brought about the crucifixion of Jesus, because his spontaneous expression of unselfed love rebuked their ceremonial worship of God, which left no room for expectancy or for further enlightenment.

To that condition of thought which is orderly and conventional, there is a certain satisfaction in having reached a stage of progress where one's sphere of usefulness seems a well-established thing, and where one has been set free from many of the hindrances and encumbrances which in the past had forced him to rise to just this plane of demonstration. These harmonious conditions, attained through spiritual understanding, must not lead to a sense of resting in work already done, and thus leave no room for the possibility of a call to new work through a further outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We cannot rest content with any demonstration. In fact, we do better work when we recognize that our whole career is just one continuous demonstration, and that this demonstration is not complete until we have ascended into heaven, and every false belief has been proved unreal by Truth. That is why inactive living is not satisfying to the advancing student of Christian Science, who knows that true living is inspiration, revelation, and demonstration, a continuously unfolding vision of God that never rests content in some good demonstration of yesterday.

As Christian Scientists we take a new view of what old theology has looked upon as religious habits of great importance; for instance, of Bible reading and church going. The Christian Science student knows that church services are not mere ends in themselves, but one of the means whereby the world is being awakened to a better understanding of God, to worship "the Father in spirit and in truth," which worship is found, as our Leader says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 40), as "daily deeds." Of books and teaching Mrs. Eddy says in "Retrospection and Introspection" (p. 85), that they are "but a ladder let down from the heaven of Truth and Love, upon which angelic thoughts ascend and descend, bearing on their pinions of light the Christ-spirit."

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