Editorial September 26, 1942 Issue

The One, Ever-adequate Way

Alfred Pittman

If one has accomplished a measure of demonstration in Christian Science, whether in the handling of an individual case of sickness or other distress, or in his experience as a whole, and has seemed unable to go farther, what is he to do? Of what is his further progress to consist? And how is he to achieve it? For that the way is always available for needed progress, Christian Science leaves no doubt.

A clue to the answers to these questions is assuredly given in the response of Christ Jesus to those of the multitude who asked him what they should do that they "might work the works of God." "This," he said, "is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent." The requirement, he was plainly saying, was that they should grasp, or grasp more fully, the true idea of being, which he was representing to them. And that this one method is sufficient for even the highest demonstration, he showed later in a prayer in the presence of the twelve. "This is life eternal," he said, "that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent."

The need at every stage of demonstration, then, is essentially mental, and it is always simply that men should perceive more clearly the facts of being, the perfection of God and His idea, of infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, man. There is indeed always the demand on us that we live the truth that we are discerning, that we see that the Life whose nature we are apprehending is our Life, and understand that it is not clearly apprehended until it is seen as manifested in man, even in our own selfhood; and this means that we must disown and disannul as rapidly as possible whatever in our human experience is unlike Life, and strive to exemplify as fully as possible all that it is. But it is clear in Science that the great value of even such human procedure is in the help that it gives us in apprehending reality. By living the divine Life more fully, we apprehend it more clearly. And in any case the essential need is just that we apprehend it more clearly.

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