Editorial May 29, 1948 Issue

REST THROUGH REGENERATION

L. Ivimy Gwalter

Rest! How much it is needed, yet how fleeting it seems! This is because humanity generally seeks it in the wrong direction. The belief that life is in matter incurs its self-imposed penalties at every step. So life is supposed to be limited, its vigor to wane, its fruitfulness to succumb to exhaustion, and its action to end in fatigue. Thus man, beast, and soil are subjected to enforced periods of idleness, and rest is usually interpreted as a time of inactivity in which nature may restore life's wasted energies. Out of this misconception springs the belief that life is weariness and that the only perpetual rest is found in death. How far removed from the verity of the spiritual, self-renewing energy of Life is this!

The Bible gives the true picture. Its first mention of rest occurs as the culmination of the glorious spiritual record of creation when "on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made" (Gen. 2:2). Here is indicated no weariness or depletion but the satisfaction of completeness and the beauty of perfection. In effortless grandeur Mind forever unfolds its own infinitude. Commenting on this passage in her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy says p. 519): "God rests in action. Imparting has not impoverished, can never impoverish, the divine Mind. No exhaustion follows the action of this Mind, according to the apprehension of divine Science."

"According to the apprehension of divine Science" the nature of Mind is perpetual action, for God, good, is conscious omniaction, which neither stagnates, slumbers, nor dreams. Mind's action is its self-expression. If Mind ceased to act, it would cease to express itself. Thus it would cease to be. Mind's inexhaustibleness supplies its perpetual self-renewal.

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