Article September 16, 1944 Issue

The Material Record Needs to be Expunged

WILLIS P. DICKEY

"The human history needs to be revised, and the material record expunged," declares Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, in "Retrospection and Introspection" (p. 22). Students of Christian Science have since that writing proved over and over again that as the material record is expunged from consciousness the human history is revised.

There is no reality in the history of mortal mind. Christ Jesus knew that the only place where the material sense of life can be recorded is in human consciousness; hence his refusal to allow personal sense to occupy his thoughts. The material record of his personal struggles was expunged from consciousness, and there was no other place to leave a record. We have no history of Jesus except that which serves to point the way of salvation for all races and peoples.

What human heart has not yearned to wipe out past mistakes and longed to begin again with a fresh record! Through the earnest study of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by our beloved Leader, we learn that we deal with sinful thoughts, never with persons. Looking back over a long list of misdeeds, one cannot recall the people, the places, or the circumstances except to thought. What has been considered as a sinful deed is a mistaken sense of life, a false sense that man is material and lives in and upon matter. With thought occupied with this falsity, mortals become the victims of their own beliefs. They become self-mesmerized. Human emotion then seems more real than the call of spirituality. The sense of physicality becomes the guiding impulse, and the individual looks upon the circumstances and environment as something outside of himself. In reality, man, who is subordinate alone to God, reflects His government of all circumstances and environment.

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