Editorial September 12, 1925 Issue

"The El Dorado of Christianity"

Albert F. Gilmore

In one of those incomparable sentences which illumine her writings like divine rays, Mrs. Eddy, in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p.9), characterizes the "first and great commandment" thus: "This command includes much, even the surrender of all merely material sensation, affection, and worship. This is the El Dorado of Christianity." Thus did our Leader emphasize the importance of obedience to God's Word, even to the extent of loving God with all our hearts. In that blessed state where all material yearnings, aims, affections, and desires are surrendered for the glorious possibility of loving God, Mrs. Eddy saw the land where the fullness of our golden dreams is realized, the realm of eternal bliss. This is indeed "the El Dorado of Christianity," the goal of every true disciple of the first Christian.

How much it means to obey this command in letter and spirit, Christian Scientists have only glimpsed. But that vision, momentary and incomplete though it may have been, has revealed enough of the joy of that perfect state to stimulate in all so favored an unquenchable longing for a more intimate acquaintance with the things of Spirit. This glimpse of the perfection which pervades God's kingdom accounts, in a degree at least, for the tireless devotion of Christian Scientists to the study of the Bible, and of the textbook and other writings of Mrs. Eddy. They have gained an intimation of true blessedness, and they are devoted to the pursuit of this inquiry without fatigue and without restraint. Practical Christianity, then, demands the laying down of all material sensation, as well as material affections. This seems like an extreme demand, but it is fundamental to spiritual progress. It by no means, however, denies the validity of pure human affections, since through pure affections we manifest our highest understanding of divine Love.

"Ye cannot serve God and mammon," was the Master's unqualified assertion, mammon being materiality, the counterfeit of the spiritual universe. What does it mean to serve mammon? Nothing less than belief in the reality of matter, obedience to its laws, and surrender to its dictates. How clear it is that we can never progress spiritually through such false attachments and affections! One cannot travel north and south at the same time; no more can he render homage to two such diametrically opposed conditions as Spirit and matter. The necessity arises, then, for choosing between the two; and we cannot hesitate. "Choose you this day whom ye will serve."

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