Editorial December 27, 1924 Issue

Renewal

Albert F. Gilmore

Mankind's seeming need for renewal and refreshment is proverbial. Believing in a material selfhood apart from God and in a mentality independent of the one infinite Mind, a mentality comprising elements of temporality and decay, mortals hold to the necessity for relaxation, recreation, and change, which bring renewal and refreshment. All these beliefs, as the student of Christian metaphysics understands, arise from a false sense of existence, from lack of understanding God and His creation, and the real man's relation to the infinite.

When Paul exhorted the Christians in Rome, "Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind," he was urging them to lay down their material sense of creation, "this world," and to look to divine Mind for that renewal which comes only when, putting aside every phase of material belief, we find man's perfectness and completeness in spiritual consciousness. Turning to God enables one to gain that renewal which results only from learning His perfect will and doing it. Obedience to God's known will is mankind's most effective insurance against the claims of the flesh. Thus is won the greatest sense of freedom, with the richest reward in terms of blessedness and eternal joy.

Isaiah assured the Israelites, "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength." Mrs. Eddy was equally clear as to the means whereby one's strength is renewed. On page 130 of "Miscellaneous Writings" she asks this pertinent question: "Know ye not that he who exercises the largest charity, and waits on God, renews his strength, and is exalted?" Here our revered Leader closely relates the renewal of one's strength to the exercise of charity, in addition to waiting on the Lord. If charity be taken to mean love, which the recent translators insist is the sense in which Paul used the word in his familiar epistle to the Corinthians, then the passage takes on a deeper significance, for who can wait on God and invoke His aid except he reflect the love which is divine? Moreover, can one doubt that exaltation would follow this transcendent experience?

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