Article June 3, 1950 Issue

"THE RACE THAT IS SET BEFORE US"

CHARLES GREEN

During the summer of 1948 the Olympic Games opened with a symbolic event, a torch relay from the site of the ancient games in Greece, right across Europe, to the modern amphitheater at the Wembley Stadium in London. Each of the runners taking part carried his own torch bearing the Olympic flame with which he kindled the torch of his successor.

From the foregoing event a beautiful lesson may easily be drawn. The flame might be said to represent the light of Truth, kindled by the warmth of Love and maintained by divine Life. This light is ours in proportion to our individual recognition of the allness and oneness of God, Spirit, Love, and our joyful awareness of man's present perfection as God's beloved offspring and divine reflection. As our individual consciousness is filled with this enlightened view of God and the real man, we cannot fail to show forth its healing warmth and radiance, so that all with whom we come in touch are abundantly blessed.

Behind the Olympic flame, which burned throughout the games, these words were blazoned: "The important thing in the Olympic Games is not so much winning but taking part; the essential thing is not conquering but fighting well." Commendable as this slogan may be, the stirring call of that great Christian, Paul, carries us very much higher and rules out all possibility of defeat: "Let us lay aside ever weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith." The race which he had in mind was the one which all have to run—the journey from sense to Soul, from a material to a spiritual sense of existence. This means the giving up of the belief of man as mortal and the recognition that he is and ever has been God's immortal, spiritual idea with no race to run and only perfection to express. Speaking of the outcome of this recognition, Mary Baker Eddy writes in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 202), "For this glorious result Christian Science lights the torch of spiritual understanding."

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