Article April 5, 1924 Issue

How Shall We Endure?

GEORGE ALBERT BOYES

To endure means to bear with patience, to remain firm under trials, to suffer without yielding. However, in a strictly moral sense, we may, perhaps, give the word a more active definition, as witness the example of Moses, the great Hebrew leader. The task assigned to Moses, that of leading the children of Israel forth from under the yoke of the cruel Egyptians, to mortal sense was certainly not an easy one; but we read in Hebrews that "he endured, as seeing him who is invisible." In the light, then, of the work that Moses and other great leaders have accomplished in the face of overwhelming difficulties, we see that endurance is not at all a physical quality, but an attribute of Soul, or divine Mind; for if we endure as we should in the prosecution of any righteous cause, faith, steadfast moral courage, constant obedience and devotion to divine Principle are required; and these qualities of Mind have been manifested by all those who have ever accomplished any great and lasting good for the benefit of humanity.

We are probably not students of Christian Science very long before we make the discovery that if we would demonstrate even a small part of what this Science teaches, the pathway is not always an easy one, according to the testimony of the physical senses. We soon learn that to be true to Principle and make daily progress Spiritward involves self-denial, self-abnegation, and material self-sacrifice. Jesus said, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me;" and we know that the life-work of the great Exemplar was one continuous affirmation of the truth of Being, and consequent denial of the false claims of material selfhood or of an existence apart from Spirit, God.

The temptations that beset mortals must be met one by one, and overcome through the understanding of God as the only real power, and of man as the perfect image and likeness of God, reflecting this perfect power and knowing no attraction apart from Spirit. The desire to worship materially, to have other gods beside the one and only God; the temptation to personalize evil, and to act from motives of hate, malice, envy, or revenge,—these and the many other temptations that would lead us astray in the paths of false material belief at times may seem overwhelming. "Here," as our Leader says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 407), "Christian Science is the sovereign panacea, giving strength to the weakness of mortal mind,—strength from the immortal and omnipotent Mind,—and lifting humanity above itself into purer desires, even into spiritual power and good-will to man."

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