Article September 28, 1929 Issue

Overcoming Discouragement

KATHARINE MAY JONES

Christian Science points the way to salvation by clearing up human misconceptions of God and of man's relationship to Him. As Mrs. Eddy states in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 127), it "reveals God, not as the author of sin, sickness, and death, but as divine Principle, Supreme Being, Mind, exempt from all evil." In other words, it reveals Him as the divine Mind, forever self-expressed throughout His own perfect and eternal universe. Mind alone includes the intelligence, wisdom, and power required for the creation and maintenance of the real universe. Christian Science reveals God's creation as wholly spiritual, and man as the highest divine idea. The fatherhood of God is thus seen as including inalienable sonship, for without sonship there can be no fatherhood. By liberating human thought from its shackles of material belief, Christian Science has brought it near enough to God to realize this indissoluble bond, so that the real man, made in His image and likeness, begins to appear.

When the truth of perfect spiritual being, forever existent in the one infinite Mind as the expression of Mind's own perfection, first dawns on human consciousness, errors of belief retreat to such an extent that instantaneous healing often results. In the joy and gratitude attending this experience, it seems impossible that one could ever again believe in a consciousness apart from God, or that he could ever again lose the sense of immunity from evil gained by the assurance of God's ever-presence and abiding love. But sooner or later he learns that he has so far but glimpsed "the glory of the Lord," which is ultimately to be revealed to all men, and which must be discerned and demonstrated by overcoming the beliefs of the flesh; and many wrestlings with false sense attend this process.

It is when one is struggling against material belief that discouragement finds its opportunity. And how cunningly it works! The seed of Truth has been sown amid the rank growth of centuries of material thinking, and must be carefully tended in order that it may attain the true fiber which neither bends nor breaks in the stress of mortal experience. God's allness, including man's unity with Him, must be constantly realized—must daily be demonstrated in thought and deed — so that the seed of Truth may grow and be fruitful. Discouragement has an adroit way of turning thought inward upon self, and this tends to reinforce the belief in a mind independent of God. Artfully it presents this mind as the prey of other minds; as the sport of "a thousand million different human wills, opinions, ambitions, tastes, and loves," to which our Leader refers on page 224 of "Miscellaneous Writings." The luring of thought away from the infinite peace of divine Mind into this supposed maelstrom is discouragement's master stroke. What but confusion could result? A belief of minds many results in limitation of good in all directions. It is therefore not surprising that an abundant crop of discord should follow its acceptance; or that to finite sense the harvest should appear as lack of health, lack of material supply, lack of friends, of justice, of love, — any or all of these,—these beliefs being capped, perhaps, by a fear of insufficient understanding to cope with the unhappy conditions that seem to prevail.

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