Article July 12, 1924 Issue

Abram and Lot

FLORENCE IRENE GUBBINS

"And Abram went up out of Egypt, he, and his wife, and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the south." When Truth comes to our consciousness through Christian Science, we recognize the call to follow at all costs; like Abram, we go up out of Egypt,—forsake the material beliefs about God and man. But Truth is a progressive unfoldment; so that as we journey on, we gain a fuller understanding of the allness of Spirit and the nothingness of matter.

Abram came to Bethel, "the house of God," where he reconsecrated himself to his vision. This reconsecration uncovered to him a conflict between a material sense of substance and the spiritual understanding of God, the conflict taking the form of a quarrel between the herdsmen of Lot's cattle and the herdsmen of Abram's cattle. Abram saw the necessity of separating these warring elements and that he and Lot must go their different ways. His understanding of true substance was shown in his willingness to let Lot choose the best of all he could see.

Man being "the compound idea of God, including all right ideas," as stated by Mrs. Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 475), he cannot include an idea of poverty or lack; he can see a land of plenty only. Nor can he be deprived of this spiritual substance by another. Material sense has imaged substance as an entity outside of God, Spirit, of which men can possess only a limited amount, and always at some one else's expense. If he is rich,—so material sense argues,—some one else must be poor. But Christian Science reveals man as the reflection of God, real substance, which substance he has reflected throughout all eternity.

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