Article December 8, 1951 Issue

THE GREAT WORK

NEIL MARTIN

"Will you give yourselves wholly and irrevocably to the great work of establishing the truth, the gospel, and the Science which are necessary to the salvation of the world from error, sin, disease, and death?" In these words in her "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 177) Mary Baker Eddy challenges her followers to put aside all self-interest and work for the world; and she adds, "Answer at once and practically, and answer aright!"

There are those who may be wholly willing to answer aright and yet may feel they do not know how most effectively to engage in "the great work." But may we not safely begin and continue it with the acknowledgment which bases Christian Science, namely, that there is one primal cause, divine Mind, and that all effect must and does partake of the nature of that cause? And may we not further aver, with the certainty begotten of prophecy, premise, precedent, and deep personal experience, that what appears to be error is really nothing but a wrong concept of Mind and its formations, mistaken beliefs generally or individually entertained in human consciousness?

Many of us, of course, are familiar enough with the false belief that evil is as real and powerful as good, a belief which is reversed and made impotent as we hold to the counterfact that God's creation is wholly good. We are familiar with the claim that there are many gods, many minds, and that we may be victims of other people's erroneous thinking, a result that is completely correctible as we glimpse the omnipresence of the one perfect Mind. We are aware that matter claims to condition thinking, whereas we know that thought governs what is called matter and that mortal mind is itself an erroneous state of consciousness.

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