Article May 14, 1932 Issue

Leaving the Field to God

MARY H. CUMMINS

WHILE the importance of earnest and systematic mental work on any problem with which the student of Christian Science may be confronted cannot well be overestimated, it is also important to avoid falling into the error of becoming mesmerized by a problem, so that it is seldom, if ever, wholly absent from thought. This is more likely to be the case if the problem is a physical one, something which, perhaps, has been labeled incurable. Fear would, if it could, keep the problem ever before one, ever in one's thought, and thus serve to perpetuate it.

One who was seeking healing in Christian Science of what appeared to be a distressing physical disability was asked by the practitioner who was helping her whether in her daily study she kept continually applying everything she read to her own problem. She said that she did. She was then asked whether, when she attended a Christian Science lecture, she went with her own problem uppermost in her thought, and sat watching for something in the lecturer's remarks which would be applicable to her own case. She said she did exactly that. Further questioning brought forth the fact that the same thing was true, to a large extent, with regard to the Sunday services and the Wednesday evening meetings. For the first time the student saw that her every avenue of thought led to her own problem. It was then lovingly pointed out to her, with beneficial results, that she had been allowing her thought to revolve largely in the orbit of the problem, rather than permitting her thought to revolve wholly in the orbit of the truth of being.

On page 419 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy writes, "Your true course is to destroy the foe, and leave the field to God, Life, Truth, and Love, remembering that God and His ideas alone are real and harmonious." Let us ask ourselves how fully we are obeying this admonition. Is our work so thoroughly done that we are conscious of having destroyed the foe? And do we then leave the field to God? If in the prayer of faith and understanding which constitutes Christian Science treatment, we with confidence and trust leave the issue to God, the truth which we have declared and realized becomes operative in our experience.

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