Editorial April 14, 1945 Issue

Positive Possession

Margaret Morrison

In her book, "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 5), Mary Baker Eddy makes this arresting statement: "Wholly apart from this mortal dream, this illusion and delusion of sense, Christian Science comes to reveal man as God's image, His idea, coexistent with Him—God giving all and man having all that God gives." Realizing the vital significance of this statement, the truth-thinking Christian Scientist will never say, "I have not." These words are eliminated from his vocabulary in their relation to any good thing. He takes to himself the lesson given by the Master, Christ Jesus, in the parable of the talents, when he said of the negative-thinking servant, "From him shall be taken away even that he hath." Profiting by this warning, the student of Christian Science will be alert and actively progressive. He will not be found afraid, burying his talent in the earth of "I have not" or "I cannot."

This positive possession of good is not mere wishful thinking, will power, or a personal heritage; rather is it the law and order of impersonal divine Principle expressing its own infinite goodness. Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 470), "Man is the expression of God's being." Man, then, has all good because he is the expression of all good, so the Christian Scientist learns to say, "I have because I am," and, "Because I am, I can." Being "the expression of God's being," man possesses, by reflection, the power of God, or good. Understanding this scientific fact, one is enabled to dispossess himself of all that is unlike God, which might claim to possess him and influence his thinking and acting contrary to his own good. He learns that he possesses the power positively to refuse to entertain any thought or quality that would tend or pretend to negate the positive good that is eternally and inevitably his.

As "the expression of God's being," man expresses intelligence which is omnipresent and omniscient, never for an instant separated from the infallible direction of Deity. This intelligence is not based on human judgment or on recurring mortal experiences, which, in time, assume the guise of law. These may sometimes serve as waymarks on one's way, but divine intelligence is never confined to their restrictions. Often, indeed, it sets aside those restrictions and reveals the possibilities of Mind, whose divine law knows no limitation of good and its manifestations. Through the acceptance and government of this divine intelligence great deeds are accomplished which have been dismissed by human wisdom as impossible. Possessing this divine intelligence, by reflection, one is never at a loss for guidance, never fearful of decisions to be made, never reluctant to take a step forward into some larger place.

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