Article July 26, 1930 Issue

Loss and Gain

NELLIE B. MACE

IN "Retrospection and Introspection" (p. 79) Mrs. Eddy says, "We glean spiritual harvests from our own material losses." Mortals have generally felt great repugnance toward any sense of loss, their desire being rather that they may gain for themselves those things which they regard as desirable, and that they may lose nothing. Christians, however, have acknowledged that if they are to win Christ, Truth, they must forsake the world, although they have not fully understood how this is to be accomplished.

Christ Jesus said, "He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal." And Paul, who so truly imbibed the spirit of Jesus' teachings, declared: "What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. . . . And I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, . . . that I may win Christ."

These words of the Master and of the apostle show forth certain points which men must understand, if they are intelligently to undertake to "glean spiritual harvests" from their "material losses." Christ Jesus' words are uncompromising: the false sense of "life in this world" is to be completely abandoned, in order that "life eternal" may be discerned and realized. And out of his own experience Paul showed that whatever he had gained from the material standpoint was as loss to his spiritual progress; but he eventually attained to so great a love for Christ, Truth, that surrender of all material concepts became to him a joy, that thereby he might the better realize the truth of spiritual existence.

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