Article July 28, 1928 Issue

Sacrifice

CONSTANCE CHOISY

Heroic deeds of sacrifice meet with many tributes of praise. The soldier laying down his life for his country, he who gives up his earthly all to benefit another, and even the so-called smaller acts of self-sacrifice, call for admiration from all who hear of them. And yet in spite of the admiration these may inspire, many would confess quite honestly that their idea of happiness is certainly not expressed in making sacrifices.

The belief of most people is very strong that the meaning of "sacrifice" is, in the words of a dictionary, "to surrender or devote with loss or suffering." They do not see the light that is thrown on the word by looking at its Latin root: sacer, sacred, and facere, to make; therefore, "to make sacred."

Students of Christian Science joyously recognize that this view of sacrifice does not involve loss and suffering, since it is a privilege which enables the one who is trying to learn happiness aright for himself and for his fellow-man to raise the standard of the Christ, Truth, which destroys the material lies of sin, sickness, and death, endeavoring "to make sacred" every thought and deed, and thus allowing God's blessing to fall on alike. Far from taking away, the act of true sacrifice confers boundless benefits; for by it the honest worker and thinker finds that he is nearer God, the Giver of all good, than he has ever been before, and that all that he has lost is some of his belief in a material sense of life and its attendant difficulties and limitations.

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