CHOOSING OUR COURSE ARIGHT

RUTH C. BARLOW

Daily , hourly, continually, the opportunity comes to men to make right decisions. Mary Baker Eddy shows the importance of our decisions in determining human experience when she says (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 19): "Between the centripetal and centrifugal mental forces of material and spiritual gravitations, we go into or we go out of materialism or sin, and choose our course and its results." Then she asks, "Which, then, shall be our choice,—the sinful, material, and perishable, or the spiritual, joy-giving, and eternal?"

With what certainty does our Leader lay the responsibility for his choice entirely upon the individual! Shall we not accept as real, as necessary, and as satisfying only that which is good, that which expresses God? Such acceptance, coupled with persistent refusal to accord intelligence, power, or reality to that which is not good—to that which must be forever unknown to the all-seeing Mind, God—inevitably results in an experience characterized by harmony, spiritual joy, abundant good.

In Luke's Gospel (8:26–39) we read of a man out of whom Jesus cast many devils. Because of dementia, the man had been forced to dwell apart from the people. When the Master found him, naked and alone among the tombs, he chose not to see a mortal stricken with a fearsome mental disturbance, but the true man, the loved child of God, reflecting in all perfection and purity his Father, omnipotent Mind. And with what results? This clear, true, Godlike view of man rebuked and destroyed for all time the hideous lie about him. The demons thus denied, cast out, proved powerless and unreal, passed into their native nothingness, oblivion, and there appeared to human apprehension a clearer concept of the perfect man, clothed and sane, joyous and free.

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