Article November 28, 1936 Issue

A God-filled Home

MABEL CONE BUSHNELL

After a demonstration has been made in Christian Science one learns that he must hold his ground with humility and a real desire to know more of God if he wishes to progress in his work. He must work and pray consistently if he would press onward into the promised land of God's allness.

To one student of Christian Science, the story of the unclean spirit that had been cast out of a man, as propounded by the Master to his disciples, has always been of great interest. The effort of the unclean spirit to find an abiding place is the seeming effort of evil everywhere, for evil never has a place of its own, since it is but a hallucination. However, seeing his former abode "empty, swept, and garnished," the unclean spirit decided to go in and take with him some of his kindred spirits, "more wicked than himself;" and the Master's narrative finishes with the statement that the last state of that man was worse than the first.

Had the man filled his consciousness with the glory of God, would there have been any place for the evil spirit to return to? The lesson is one that can be taken to heart with humble gratitude, in order that one's healing may be maintained and still lovelier healings be experienced. It is right to sweep clean and to garnish one's mental home, but never to leave it empty. The emptiness, or lack of true thinking, tempts error to go in and occupy it, and reversal and relapse may be the outcome. In her Message to The Mother Church for 1900 (p. 8) Mary Baker Eddy's statement, "Mental idleness or apathy is always egotism and animality," indicates the necessity for mental work so that the dangers of animal magnetism may be overcome. Since in reality there is no physical man to be sick, it is evident that only unlovely mental qualities need to be disposed of. When disease, then, returns or relapses, it means that possibly some unlovely trait has not been thoroughly eradicated and needs further erasure, so that there may be no possible danger of reversal, or that belief in the possibility of relapse has not been annulled.

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