Article May 23, 1931 Issue

Giving Up?

MARY RETTA TITUS

The new student of Christian Science soon begins to find that many of his former habits of living are not in accord with the standard he is now accepting for himself. He is endeavoring to become a right thinker, and hence a right doer; and as a result of this effort he finds many false material pleasures, which are the result of wrong, material thinking, fading from his experience.

Some who do not understand Christian Science may speak of this as "giving up," in order to be a follower of its teachings. This, however, is only because they are ignorant of what really takes place. If you awakened one morning to find that a cherished possession which you had believed to be solid gold was revealed in the brightness of the sunlight to be but imitation, and a loving hand offered to replace it with a gift of real gold, would you cling to the worthless object, or would you accept with gratitude the gift of real and lasting value?

So it is in Christian Science. We gain everything, but never give up anything that is real. We give up erroneous beliefs in exchange for the facts of being. Christian Science says to us in the words of our Master, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." Instead of false, material, temporal, and fleeting pleasures, we find spiritual joy, which is everlasting, the joy that "no man taketh from you." In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 265): "The loss of earthly hopes and pleasures brightens the ascending path of many a heart. The pains of sense quickly inform us that the pleasures of sense are mortal and that joy is spiritual."

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