Article July 23, 1927 Issue

Saving Activity

SAMUEL GREENWOOD

The apostle's counsel to the Philippians, "Work out your own salvation," indicates that positive and sustained activity is an essential of true Christianity. That this was understood by the early Church Fathers is seen by the inclusion of "sloth" among the "seven deadly sins," although the modern tendency is to limit its application to mere physical idleness. The demand that men shall be active in the world of sense is not more insistent than it is in the spiritual realm, the difference being that mortals believe the former to be a necessity, while the latter is looked upon largely as a matter of choice. One must have food and clothes and shelter, they say, and therefore one must work for them; but they do not see that to keep goodness and purity and love active in the heart is a greater necessity than to procure the things which "perish with the using."

A student is sometimes tempted to feel discouraged because he still finds himself in the grasp of discordant conditions, and still in bondage to the ungodliness in his own thoughts; but may it not be that we ask or expect from Christian Science more than we are willing in our hearts to work for, or to make room for? Mortals are not saved from evil by a passive recognition of its unreality, or by an intellectual acceptance of the teachings of Christian Science. In her loving but decisive way Mrs. Eddy writes in her Message to The Mother Church for 1900 (p. 2), "The song of Christian Science is, 'Work—work—work—watch and pray.'" And this means that we must make Christian Science the business of our lives; that we must be absorbingly busy in the right direction, mentally, morally, and spiritually, every moment.

The mental process known as the "new birth" describes the work required of all Christians. As Jesus said to Nicodemus, it is the only way into the kingdom of heaven. This process includes the transformation of thought, motives, aims, desires, character and nature from evil to good, from the sensual to the spiritual, from the human to the divine; and this is not fully accomplished in a day or a year. In terms of daily activity, it means the patient weeding out of consciousness of the things that offend, and the equally patient and earnest endeavor to pattern thought after the divine ideal. This necessarily brings one into conflict with the errors of human belief, which ultimate in sin and disease, and with that stubborn resistance to spirituality which is inherent in the so-called fleshly mind. The task of correcting and eliminating the ingrained faults and perversities of temperament, which seem to become inextricably fixed through habitual indulgence, and of replacing them with the qualities which express God, may appear at times to be almost hopeless. Like the sculptor-boy, referred to by our Leader in "The People's Idea of God" (p. 7), we may have to chisel out the resisting marble "with many a sharp incision," until the "angel-vision" of our spiritual better self appears in its beauty and permanence.

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