Article January 1, 1938 Issue

Disposing of the Evils of Yesterday

MYRON FABRICANT

Happy is the individual who through the teachings of Christian Science has learned to dispose of the evils of yesterday. To the one still brooding over them, the Christ, Truth, reveals the way out of the mesmeric belief in the carried-over evil. Christian Science teaches that the effect of wrong beliefs is not indelible any more than are diseases incurable. It destroys the false belief in an irrevocable past through the realization of omnipresent Love, which erases the sense of evil and leaves nothing but what Mind, the creator, knows about its own ideas. In this spiritualized consciousness there is no condemnation of oneself or another, but a joyful acceptance of the redeeming declaration that "God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved."

Sometimes the suffering one is so disturbed by the remembrance of his past ignorance or disobedience to God's law that he dare not take anyone into his confidence, even when most in need of help. To such a one, the certainty is held out that he can gain his own pardon by turning directly to God. On this point of obtaining surcease from self-condemnation effectively, Mrs. Eddy writes in "No and Yes" (p. 31), "To me divine pardon is that divine presence which is the sure destruction of sin; and I insist on the destruction of sin as the only full proof of its pardon."

But perhaps the problem of disposing of past evil seems more difficult when someone has hurt us. The continual sense of irritation interferes with our daily work, and we are not at peace with ourselves because of the mental harboring of belief in evil. Under such circumstances one may ask, Is not this seeming suffering purely a condition of thought? Cannot the wrong picture of the individual and the unpleasantness connected with him be disposed of mentally as if it had never taken place? To these questions Christian Science replies in the affirmative. In the Message to The Mother Church for 1901 our Leader points out (pp. 12, 13), "Evil is neither quality nor quantity: it is not intelligence, a person or a principle, a man or a woman, a place or a thing, and God never made it." This authoritative statement of a spiritual fact can and does heal by eradicating all beliefs of resentment and sensitiveness.

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Disposing of the Evils of Yesterday

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