Article October 1, 1932 Issue

Self-Mastery

DELLA M. WHITNEY

HE who is constantly listening for and obeying God's voice is traversing the straight and narrow path which leads to peace, health, and prosperity. Keeping before him no lesser goal than that embodied in the Master's words, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect," he is sure to gain, proportionately, the mastery over self. Individual striving for self-purification, praying for the uncovering of evil in one's own thinking and earnestly endeavoring to replace it with good, will do much to correct inharmony in the home, in business, and in the world at large.

Perhaps nothing would hinder the winning of selfmastery more than admitting to one's own thinking the evil claims of envy and jealousy. These must be detected and destroyed before true happiness and progress can be won. When one can be truly joyous over the good another is accomplishing; when he can gladly see another go forward and perhaps take the very steps he himself has longed to take, but has not yet accomplished, he is gaining in some degree the mastery over self.

In Paul's first letter to the Corinthians we read, "Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things." One definition of "temperate" is "exhibiting self-control." In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy says (p. 405): "Christian Science commands man to master the propensities, — to hold hatred in abeyance with kindness, to conquer lust with chastity, revenge with charity, and to overcome deceit with honesty. Choke these errors in their early stages, if you would not cherish an army of conspirators against health, happiness, and success."

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