Editorial October 14, 1933 Issue

On Parting

Violet Ker Seymer

Mrs. Eddy writes (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 232), "Proportionately as we part with material systems and theories, personal doctrines and dogmas, meekly to ascend the hill of Science, shall we reach the maximum of perfection in all things." Humanity's advance is hindered by its traditional beliefs, its material idolatry, its backward looks. Everyone should be eager to part with false views regarding health, heredity, capacity, opportunity, since to argue for the discordant evidence of the five physical senses is to clasp the very fetters under which one is chafing.

The burdens imposed by materiality can all be laid off through spirituality. The testimony of material sense can be reversed through the culture of spiritual sense. In proportion, then, as one seeks and finds health, ability, happiness, and also uplifting human companionship through the reflection of divine Mind, the haunting fear of loss or depreciation of these is blotted out. It is a scientific impossibility for man to stray beyond the omnipresence of Life, Truth, and Love, or to be deprived for one moment of the impartations of divine Mind. It is equally impossible for anything material to find a place in the infinitude of divine Love.

How may these transcendental facts touch and bless human experience? How may one become aware of his individual oneness with God, ever present good? In "Pulpit and Press" (p. 4) Mrs. Eddy tells us how this deep and legitimate longing may be fulfilled. There she says, "You have simply to preserve a scientific, positive sense of unity with your divine source, and daily demonstrate this." Man's unity with every faculty of divine Mind is spiritually established, and this unity can never be disestablished. But in order to preserve this sense of unity, the baseless beliefs and false mental habits so common to mankind have to be detected and abandoned. Ingratitude, morose brooding, fear, disparaging criticism, are thieving suggestions of the carnal mind. If we are not progressing as we should, we may profitably ask ourselves what phases of error in both thought and action we have not yet parted with, and what heavenly qualities we have not yet proved to be our own. Through increased meekness and teachableness all unreal traits can be parted with. They are but benighted beliefs destined to be blotted out by the light of spiritual understanding so abundantly shed on us through Christian Science.

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