Article October 14, 1933 Issue

Alone

SOPHIE F. STOLZ

In its common signification the word "alone" often suggests isolation, separation from all that is joyous and heart-easing. It is akin to loneliness, that mental state which tempts one to indulge the errors of self-pity, depression, and even despair. Not so did the Biblical heroes accept aloneness. Moses was alone in the mount, and in this quiet sanctuary he received and recorded the Commandments that have blessed mankind. Jacob, face to face with error, was alone in his struggle with a distorted sense of life as material, when he received the revelation of spiritual being. We read that Jesus frequently communed alone with his Father; and when his disciples failed to watch with him, he kept his lonely watch through the crucial hour in Gethsemane. His victory has shown to mankind the way of salvation.

The truths of Christian Science were revealed to Mary Baker Eddy in the watch she kept with God. For three years she "sought the solution of this problem of Mind-healing," as she tells us in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 109); and she says that "the search was sweet, calm, and buoyant with hope, not selfish nor depressing." She kept aloof from society until "through divine revelation, reason, and demonstration" she had found the Principle of scientific healing and the method of its application for mankind today.

Through intuition these heroic figures in religious history must have known what it means to be truly alone. It may be said that the word "alone" is compounded from the two words "all" and "one." All are at one with God, and at one with God's family. This is the angel-message which came to a student when studying the encouraging statement on page 66 of Science and Health, "Trials are proofs of God's care," in conjunction with the statement (p. 574), "The very circumstance, which your suffering sense deems wrathful and afflictive, Love can make an angel entertained unawares." During human trials, resulting from false education and common consent, come proofs of this care. Jacob was mentally reborn in his struggle with error, a struggle so common to mankind that it is easily understood. He was impelled to a higher communion with divine Love, and the message of Truth gave him the spiritual strength to prevail. The trial or test was changed to proof, and what may have seemed to him a "wrathful and afflictive" circumstance became a blessing. What greater blessing can come to anyone, what greater need has anyone, than an understanding of God, of His ways or laws?

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