Article May 17, 1924 Issue

Advancing Footsteps

MILDRED F. GOODCELL

As one progresses in the study and demonstration of Christian Science, many beautiful and inspiring vistas of spiritual thought open up before the gaze. Indeed, a student of Christian Science in some respects is like the explorer who feels the urge of a freer thought, the desire for a fuller experience, and the great satisfaction of solving hitherto insurmountable difficulties. Every step forward along the way from worldly-mindedness to the Mind of Christ discloses a new point of view, from which is seen more clearly the grandeur and desirability of the promised land ahead. As the Pilgrim Fathers answered the call of their conscience to go up higher along this heavenly way, and were led to venture across the sea, so to-day we, as Christian Scientists, must carry out nobly and unselfishly God's plan of salvation.

The student of Christian Science, in striving to go forward on this journey from unreality to the real, begins to substitute along every line of human experience the spiritual idea for the material concept of things; in accordance with the words of Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 123), "Divine Science, rising above physical theories, excludes matter, resolves things into thoughts, and replaces the objects of material sense with spiritual ideas." Material objects are seen to be but the apparent outward manifestation of material beliefs, as are all physical phenomena; and this human concept should be supplanted by an understanding of the spiritual nature of all of God's creation. It may be seen, for instance, that real breathing—spiritual inspiration—is really the reception and acceptance of good, or the reflection only of that which is good. The daily round of business, of household duties, or of any work in which one is engaged, may be accomplished from the standpoint that all right activity is in reality God's business, and is the reflection of divine Mind's constant activity. We may, indeed, always be working for none other than our creator, the Ruler of the real universe of Spirit.

The automobile, the radio, the telephone, may in the same way be looked upon as symbols of expanding thought, which is becoming less and less fettered, and is pushing ever onward toward spiritual reality, where time, space, and matter no longer exist even in belief. Then, again, the arts of painting, sculpture, music, literature, architecture, and the drama may be thought of in the same way, and the spiritual concept gained, since the "things which are seen were not made of things which do appear."

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