Article August 16, 1930 Issue

The Victory of Resignation

HERSCHEL P. NUNN

RESIGNATION, spiritually and scientifically apprehended, is a very different state of consciousness from that implied in the usual use of the word. Far from being a negative sense of giving up or surrender to untoward circumstances, it is a positive, victorious quality of thought. In one of those comforting and inspiring passages of her writings, the beloved Leader of the Christian Science movement, Mary Baker Eddy, thus employs the word in its true sense (Message to The Mother Church for 1902, p. 17): "Consult thy everyday life; take its answer as to thy aims, motives, fondest purposes, and this oracle of years will put to flight all care for the world's soft flattery or its frown. Patience and resignation are the pillars of peace that, like the sun beneath the horizon, cheer the heart susceptible of light with promised joy." Here it is clearly indicated that exalted spiritual desires silence the call of the world, and a willingness to resign the Iure of materiality opens the door to heavenly blessings.

Resignation, defined by Webster as "act or fact of resigning, or giving up, . . . surrender . . . patient submission or acquiescence," implies either a giving up of some present pursuit or possession or a patient waiting for some cherished desire to be fulfilled. The question is, To what are we surrendering; to what are we submitting? For the Christian Scientist, to resign materiality is to obtain a joy, possibly not yet perceived but awaiting him as surely as with the appearing of the sun above the horizon the dawn awaits to-morrow's new day. He gives up the unreal and gains a firmer hold on the real. He gives up materiality and takes on spiritual substance. In fact, the taking on usually comes first—the taking on of enough spirituality, enough understanding, enough humility, to crowd out material desire.

"I am resigned to God's will" has for long been the unhappy complaint of these mortals whose false beliefs about God have taught them to fear Him, to regard Him as responsible for the evil as well as for the good which comes into their lives. Right resignation is concomitant with obedience. "I delight to do thy will, O my God," is the new-old song of the Christian Scientist who knows God as the author of good only, who sees His will for His children as beneficence and tender mercy, and who sees in evil, disaster, and death naught but the supposititious absence of God's presence, power, and will. To obey God is indeed to be blessed. To be resigned to His will is to be confident of the continuous unfolding of ever higher blessings in human experience. As we grow in spiritual understanding, new aims and holier purposes enrich our thoughts and reveal new and higher joys than were before realized. To attain these higher stages of understanding, we are sometimes called upon to put aside a present sense of seeing good in order to reach out more eagerly for the real.

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