Inspiration and Guidance

George Shaw Cook

Mortals frequently lack an adequate sense of direction. They are often conscious of the need for a more assured sense of guidance in their daily lives and affairs. With this lack of a definite sense of direction and guidance there is likely to be confusion, indecision, uncertainty, and doubt.

That which is required to destroy this confused and uncertain sense, so common in human experience, is divine inspiration. "Love," Mrs. Eddy writes on page 454 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," "inspires, illumines, designates, and leads the way." What mortals need, then, to illumine their daily path and to guide them in the right way, is inspiration—that inspiration which emanates from and is an unfailing and infallible quality of divine Love.

Writing again on the subject of inspiration, Mrs. Eddy says (ibid., p. 84), "Acquaintance with the Science of being enables us to commune more largely with the divine Mind, to foresee and foretell events which concern the universal welfare, to be divinely inspired,—yea, to reach the range of fetterless Mind." One who through inspiration becomes conscious of his indestructible unity with "fetterless Mind" can no longer entertain a sense of uncertainty. He can no longer be the victim of indecision. He can no longer be in bondage to doubt. It is plain that the all-knowing Mind does not include a sense of indecision or uncertainty, and it should be equally clear that man, created in the likeness of Mind, and for the purpose of expressing the exact nature of Mind, could not be conscious of that which Mind, God, does not include.

Problems are, however, often presented to mortals in the form of doubt as to what decision to make, what direction to take, what course to pursue. Two or more ways may be open, one of several things can be done. The question then presents itself, Which is right—or the nearest right—in the existing circumstances? What shall I do? But it is not, in fact, a question of what to do, so much as it is what to know. For if what one knows and holds to is true, then what one does will be right. So in a situation wherein the mental vision seems obscured by doubt, the thing one needs, in order to establish in his thinking a sense of security and decision, is to know that God, divine Mind, is the unfailing and ever-available source of wisdom and intelligence.

"Wisdom," we read in Proverbs, "is the principle thing;" and wisdom and intelligence, Christian Science explains, are qualities of divine Mind which man reflects perfectly, at all times. Therefore, through claiming his divine heritage as the son of God, which, in reality, everyone now is, one may prove that in any circumstance he has enough wisdom to know what to do and enough intelligence to know how to do it, as well as enough love to do it lovingly and without fear.

In his Scriptural answers to the tempter in the wilderness, in his replies to his opponents, in his refusal at times to answer his persecutors, and in many other incidents recorded in the Gospels, there is abundant evidence that Jesus the Christ was guided by inspired wisdom—wisdom that could only have come to him from a divine source.

When Peter and John were brought before the council of the Jews after the healing of the lame man at the Beautiful gate of the temple, Peter, in explaining the cure, was divinely inspired to say boldly that which served to stay the hand of the accusers. "And beholding the man which was healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it."

Paul, after he and Silas were miraculously delivered, as it seemed to human sense, from prison, in Philippi, was inspired to say to the frightened jailer those quieting and reassuring words: "Do thyself no harm: for we are all here." Thus the jailer's fear was allayed, and it is recorded that he took them to his house, "set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house."

Our Leader had unwavering faith in divine guidance. She was divinely inspired to do the right thing, at the right time, in the right way. She sought always to be guided by divine Principle in the human footsteps she took, and there is unquestionable proof that her heavenly Father, in whom she trusted implicitly, did not fail her.

Students of Christian Science, profiting by the example of their Leader and demonstrating the truth of her teaching, are finding in proportion to their faithfulness and consecration that they, also, can confidently rely on divine Love for inspiration and guidance.

George Shaw Cook

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