Editorial June 13, 1931 Issue

Individual Advance

Violet Ker Seymer

The Christian Scientist is an individual seeker, finder, and follower of spiritual light. Every student has his own race to run and his own rising standard to stimulate him. He knows that vision, obedience, zeal, speed his onward footsteps, and he therefore claims this on-spurring trio of qualities which always characterize man in God's likeness. He is equally ready to detect and deny any suggestion of their absence, or their opposites, either in himself or in another. He is confident that, as he obeys every rule of Christian Science, he has the support of divine Principle and spiritual law. By this obedience and alertness he is kept in the Way and strays into no byways. As every Christian Scientist presses on to his goal, his example is an incentive and an encouragement to all those moving either slowly or fast along the same road of spiritual achievement.

The opposite method of making human comparisons is deterring to progress because, by it, the gaze is not lifted to the standard of perfection, but is lowered. As he inclines either to self-condemnation or to self-adulation, one who makes human comparisons will think himself either better or worse than others. The effect will be personally elating or personally depressing. Either of these states of thought may veil from him the bright light shining in the command, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."

If some students of Christian Science succeed more rapidly than others, or are more quickly healed, one should not on this account allow another's more rapid progress to chill the glow of his own gratitude for past demonstrations, or limit his confidence regarding those still to come. There are diversities of human character, disposition, temperament, and temptation, but this is no cause for discouragement, because the transforming influence of divine Love can make strong every weak place in human consciousness.

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