Article December 10, 1949 Issue

HUMILITY ESSENTIAL TO UNDERSTAND THE SAVING CHRIST

MYRTLE A. CASH

In his parable of the Pharisee and the publican, related in the eighteenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus makes it clear that the prayer of the humble heart is answered because it realizes the limitations of the human mind and so reaches out to a higher power for comfort and release from sin and discord. Of this heart Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, has this to say (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 127): "When a hungry heart petitions the divine Father-Mother God for bread, it is not given a stone,—but more grace, obedience, and love. If this heart, humble and trustful, faithfully asks divine Love to feed it with the bread of heaven, health, holiness, it will be conformed to a fitness to receive the answer to its desire; then will flow into it the 'river of His pleasure,' the tributary of divine Love, and great growth in Christian Science will follow,— even that joy which finds one's own in another's good."

The student of Christian Science must humbly search his heart to see that arrogance and pride have no lodgment there. Then will it be "conformed to a fitness to receive the answer to its desire" for growth in grace. The Scientist who abides by the Golden Rule, taking an uncompromising stand against evil of every nature and fearlessly living the truth, will bring blessing to all with whom he is associated and so find his own "in another's good."

The truly humble student will soon learn that it is not possible to understand the Christ, the true idea of sonship, through mortal and material sense, but that he must forsake his belief in a corporeal, finite sense of existence and see man as reflecting God, divine Mind, Love, Principle. Then will self-will begin to give way to selfless love of the Christ, and the vagaries and inconsistencies of mortal mind will no longer stand in the way of the proof, in outward and visible manifestation, of man's reflection of Love's divinity. The humility which acknowledges the instability of the human mind leaves the way open, once confusion and self-condemnation are out of the way, for the unfoldment of man's true identity as revealed by the Christ-idea. Thus the spiritually enlightened thinker will express firmness, patience, kindliness, and courage in ascending degree.

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