Indivisible Fealty

OLIVE HILDRETH MAYER

WE who have shared the immeasurable blessings of the Christian Science Sunday School well know its Godgiven guidance in helping us to know ourselves as God's children. Its sweet, yet tenable teaching is grasped with eagerness, as we are patiently led to seek "first the kingdom of God." Still, youth often seems impetuous. While loving and believing all the words of our Master, we sometimes seem to require the passing of a higher test and the acquisition of a fuller understanding before we may know them in deed and make their demonstration our own.

This was my own experience. I was to be graduated from high school, and the time had come to make my choice of a vocation. My parents were willing that I should have whatever further education I might desire, although hoping that I should choose to go to college. But I had quite determined which school I should attend. The fact that the instruction I should receive and the field which I should be prepared to enter were not in accordance with the teachings of Christian Science never caused me to doubt that my chosen course was the one in which I should be most happy. Yet the studies would be of an entirely material nature, holding man to be existent in anything but a perfect state, and thereby pointing toward the physical and mutable. At Sunday school I mentioned my decision, and my teacher quietly talked over the whole question with me, displaying tender forbearance, and patiently presenting the facts, for she was well acquainted with the curriculum of the chosen school. But it still seemed that I had to learn my lesson

Two years later I was graduated, and pronounced a certified teacher of my chosen work. But what had happened? My enthusiasm for it had entirely left me. I stood prepared to fill a place in this field of activity, but now possessed not the slightest desire to do so. At last it had become shallow and repulsive to me. The doctrine of materialism which I had been studying had insidiously crept into my thought, and I found that my entire outlook was one of chaos and instability. Through dwelling upon the imperfect and erroneous concept of man, I had ceased to know man in his proper relationship to God. I had failed in my reliance upon Truth; I had slipped backward in my comprehension of the real, because of my constant contemplation of the unreal. I had been trying to divide my fealty, and these words of Mrs. Eddy came to me more significantly than ever before (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 326): "He, who would reach the source and find the divine remedy for every ill, must not try to climb the hill of Science by some other road. All nature teaches God's love to man, but man cannot love God supremely and set his whole affections on spiritual things, while loving the material or trusting in it more than in the spiritual."

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