Article November 18, 1950 Issue

UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER

WILLIAM GEORGE DEAKIN

Unconditional surrender is not necessarily an evil thing for those on whom it is imposed. It depends on what is surrendered, and to whom. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, we read (p. 9): "Dost thou 'love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind'? This command includes much, even the surrender of all merely material sensation, affection, and worship. This is the El Dorado of Christianity. It involves the Science of Life, and recognizes only the divine control of Spirit, in which Soul is our master, and material sense and human will have no place." Here our Leader makes an uncompromising demand for unconditional surrender, the complete surrender of belief in matter, material intelligence, and material philosophy, to the absolute control of Spirit, God.

There will be few amongst enlightened, free citizens of the world who will not be prepared to admit that such a surrender is highly desirable, although the number of those who are prepared to make such a surrender seems to be limited. Man, made in the image and likeness of God, reflecting the omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience of Mind, Life's eternal consciousness of existence, the perfection of Principle, Love, has no need to make any surrender. He exists at the standpoint of perfection. Mortals, however, the counterfeits of the spiritually real, have to make such a surrender. Mortal mind must make an unconditional surrender of mortality to immortality. It must acknowledge that God is All and matter is nothing; that God is all power and matter is no power.

The material senses, limited to a supposititious material conception of existence, can only express untruthfulness; they are of too impure eyes to behold good, and so such senses must yield to the senses of Soul, God, of whom Habakkuk declared (1:13), "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity." A material conception of existence, dependent on the so-called material senses, must yield to a spiritual understanding of being, appreciated by the spiritual senses of Soul. Unconditional surrender is essential. That is the standpoint of Christian Science.

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