Editorial March 5, 1949 Issue

OUR INHERITANCE

Robert Ellis Key

Have you ever thought deeply about your inheritance? One says, "I inherited a few things from my parents;" another, "I am heir to a big estate;" while yet a third may plaintively declare, "I never inherited anything and am not likely to!" These statements are all based on the belief that inheritance is material, that we derive our substance from matter instead of Spirit, and that a person or circumstance can give us something or take it away.

Some people, uninstructed in Christian Science, believe they inherit a tendency to a particular disease or are victims of immoral or undesirable traits. They may believe this because human parents have suffered in a similar way. Christian Science shows there is no divine law to support such an assumption. "Heredity is not a law," writes Mary Baker Eddy on page 178 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures;" and on page 228 she makes this important statement concerning heredity: "Heredity is a prolific subject for mortal belief to pin theories upon; but if we learn that nothing is real but the right, we shall have no dangerous inheritances, and fleshly ills will disappear."

These comforting assurances lift the burdens imposed by heredity and point to the truth of our real inheritance. This truth is summarized by Peter in his first epistle, where he writes (1:3, 4), "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you."

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