Article August 23, 1924 Issue

Unvarying Truth

MARY KINNEY SWAIN

Truth is always true. No matter how each individual may interpret it, how much of it he may understand or misunderstand, how hard he may work to establish a system of his own based on other lines, Truth remains unchanged and forever the same. If continuous effort could alter truth, generations of children would have succeeded by this time in making two plus two equal five; but even today, as of old, each beginner has to surrender to the original established fact that two plus two equals four. He makes his life happy and harmonious, or the opposite, in so far as his study of mathematics is concerned, according to his realization of the fact that law controls the subject, and that he himself must work in accordance with it. Such rigid exactness may seem cruel to the child, and the outlook upon the seemingly endless mathematical problems yet to be solved discouraging, but if only he is obedient and persevering, how many unnecessary confusing experiences he will save himself, and how much more easily each new problem will be solved! Indeed, he may have already begun to dream of some day being an engineer, and so of spanning great rivers with great bridges; but he cannot hope to make his dream come true unless he acknowledges, among many other mathematical facts, that two plus two equals four. Really that rigid exactness is a blessing; and with more experience he learns to love it and to be grateful for it.

Just so is it with mankind's life-problems. Christian Science is teaching that there is one God, divine Principle, which, as Mrs. Eddy says in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 496), is "underlying, overlying, and encompassing all true being," and that each and every problem of our daily living must be worked out in accordance therewith. The reason why Jesus was the most spiritually successful man ever known was that he did not listen to the arguments of so-called mortal mind, but turned ever to the one and only Mind for guidance. "Not my will, but thine, be done," he said. Many of us are as yet in the kindergarten stage, making our first little efforts to learn how to solve our life problems correctly. We are grateful that some have passed into the higher grades, thereby proving that progress is possible, and that these turn so lovingly toward us to help us.

Man, in reality, is the highest, most complete expression of the divine Principle, God. And just as the child is not expected to grasp the higher mathematics before he has learned simple addition and subtraction, so men need not complain if at once they do not comprehend and demonstrate all the richness and fullness of man's perfect selfhood as the perfect idea of God. Each student of Christian Science must aim to increase continually his understanding of divine Principle, and to keep his thinking and acting in accord with his improved understanding. As Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health (p. 323): "In order to apprehend more, we must put into practice what we already know."

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