Article November 24, 1934 Issue

Forward, Not Backward!

LILY R. SCHAFER

"Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." When writing these words to the Philippians, Paul had thought fixed on the spiritual ideal. Of an active, zealous nature, while as yet not comprehending the reality of the spiritual creation, he had sought to persecute the followers of Jesus. Awakened from the dream of life in matter, he turned his gaze from the blindness, the inability, of mortal mind to view the beauty of the life eternal. A new enthusiasm animated him, for his vision had been clarified. With loving, tender zeal he reached out to uplift and to bless, instead of to condemn and to persecute. Exhorting, admonishing, patiently guiding, he sought to lead others away from the mirage of mortal beliefs into the sunlight of spiritual understanding.

With clear-cut precision, Paul severed his connection with the past of error and steadfastly turned to the truth, in the direction he intended to travel from then on. He understood that he could not afford to allow vain regrets regarding the past to act as dead weights to retard his progress in the present. In other words, he turned his face toward heaven, spiritual harmony, and was determined to keep it turned in that direction.

Is not this the lesson all must learn who have awakened to the fact that man is spiritual, and that life is more than a dull round of material living? Heaven is a divine state of consciousness. Our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 587), defines "heaven" as "harmony; the reign of Spirit; government by divine Principle; spirituality; bliss; the atmosphere of Soul." By this is it not made evident that the prize Paul had determined to attain was a heavenly state of consciousness? Was he not looking through and beyond matter to the spiritual creation, which expresses harmony without a discordant note? When we begin to realize that a sick and sinning mortal is no part of God's creation; that discordant conditions are only the dream of life in matter; that beauty and order are ever present; that the seeming discord of the world is not the truth of being; then we, too, are pressing "toward the mark" that Christ Jesus set for all when he healed the sick and the sinning.

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