Editorial October 15, 1938 Issue

True Self-Knowledge

Violet Ker Seymer

How deep is the yearning to understand oneself and one's fellows, and how earnestly parents desire to develop good qualities in their children! Yet how often has this legitimate yearning and desire been misdirected. Why? Mainly because of humanity's ingrained belief in good and evil as being real and powerful in opposite ways. To this unfounded, ignorant superstition, all distressing conflicts and poor results are traceable.

Christian Science is invaluable in teaching one how to discover and express his God-given individuality. In the Colloquy between "Good" and "Evil" (Unity of Good, by Mary Baker Eddy, p. 24), "Good" states: "I am the infinite All. From me proceedeth all Mind, all consciousness, all individuality, all being." Mind, then, is the source and abiding place of man's eternally perfect spiritual identity. The image or expression of God, Spirit, is no more subject to confusion, impurity, selfishness, disease, failure generally, than is God. Man, the manifestation of Mind, expresses divine qualities without effort and without lapse.

Paul's imagery in II Corinthians presents the way in which one may discover his true selfhood. In the third chapter, verse eighteen, he writes, "We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." One's true individuality, Spirit's reflection, is forever unfolding "from glory to glory." The Christian Scientist knows that this unfolding is to be expected, cherished, and guarded in order that he may never be deceived by mortal mind's apparent substitution of mortal personality, its own false image, for spiritual individuality, God's image.

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