Editorial September 14, 1946 Issue

Are We Becoming Better Mortals?

John Randall Dunn

Certainly the desire to improve is wholesome. No one, save him who seems submerged in the mesmerism of materialism, can be said to be satisfied with apathy, with a complete lack of mental or spiritual progress. Therefore, if one asks the average student of Christian Science if he considers that he is a better mortal than he used to be, the answer will be in the hearty affirmative. He will recount the blessings which this great truth has brought to him; he will note with gratitude the lessening of certain unlovely temperamental characteristics, and point with happiness to the overcoming of some enslaving appetite. Is he not, then, a better mortal?

Let this question be examined in the light of Christian metaphysics. Suppose we have two glasses of equal height and capacity. Let us fill one glass with water, and in the other put quicksilver, or mercury. Now let us begin pouring the mercury into the water glass. What happens? Every drop of the quicksilver, because of its density, promptly goes to the bottom of the receptacle and displaces a corresponding volume of water. Do the water and the mercury mix? No. Is the nature of the water being changed by the mercury? No. Is it becoming better water? No, there is less and less water in the glass. When the quicksilver has been completely transferred to the other glass, the water will all have been eliminated.

Now into what we know as the human consciousness are poured, through the sacred teachings of Christian Science, spiritualized concepts of God, man, and the universe. These higher views and holy thoughts are banishing the ignorant, limiting, and discordant beliefs of the carnal or mortal mind just as surely as the heavier mercury dispels the lighter water. But the reader may ask. Can we truly affirm then that we are better mortals, or that mortal mind is becoming spiritualized? Is it not more correct to aver that, because of the inpouring of Truth, mankind is becoming less mortal?

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