Article December 26, 1925 Issue

Joyous Progress

JEANNETTE HANNAN SIMMONS

THAT one cannot be a progressive student of Christian Science and at the same time live from day to day submerged in a constant routine of material duties or pleasures, is made clear in the statement on page 233 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, which reads, "Every day makes its demands upon us for higher proofs rather than professions of Christian power;" and, in the same paragraph, "Progress is the law of God, whose law demands of us only what we can certainly fulfil." In order to meet these demands of God, one may find that his concept of pleasure must change, while another may be compelled to see that necessary human duties have their right place, and at the same time their proper value in our thoughts and lives. In other words, one may have been a thoughtless slave to material pleasures, while another may awake to find that he has believed himself to be in bondage to material labor, either condition being an impediment to joyous spiritual progress.

Since "day" is defined by Mrs. Eddy, partly, as time measured "according to the good that is unfolded" (Science and Health, p. 584), then every moment spent in meditation upon, desire for, or the doing of good, is making up our days or steps of progress. And even though our days may not include indulgence in merely material pleasures, our happiness may far exceed the happiness of those days when our whole purpose in life seemed to be the seeking of new pastimes and possessions. For we are learning like David that in God's presence (the presence of good) "is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore."

There is nothing truer of Christian Science than the fact that it does demand consecration to purely good thinking and living from all who claim its name. This does not mean, however, that one is robbed of anything that is really worth holding dear. But it does require the gradual exchanging of material desires for spiritual, and the placing first in our thought and desire of the things of God. And this can be done only by normal steps of joyous progress. We must be continually coming forth from the bondage of all so-called material attraction into the understanding and freedom of what God's pleasures and God's work really are.

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