Editorial January 26, 1952 Issue

SCIENTIFIC MODESTY

Helen Wood Bauman

In her book "Miscellaneous Writings" Mary Baker Eddy says (p. 243), "Boasting is unbecoming a mortal's poor performances." Any student of Christian Science who sees the vastness of the spiritual demands that confront him before he can demonstrate this Science in the fullness of its powers is careful not to exalt his present accomplishments. Nor is he likely to boast his own spirituality above that of his fellows. In genuine modesty he acknowledges the meager extent of his present understanding of a Science that is infinite in its scope and might. He knows that he understands only what he can consistently prove.

Even our Leader spoke of her present sense of Christian Science as feeble, and she says in the volume quoted in the previous paragraph (p. 317), "Scarcely a moiety, compared with the whole of the Scriptures and the Christian Science textbook, is yet assimilated spiritually by the most faithful seekers; yet this assimilation is indispensable to the progress of every Christian Scientist." Modesty, akin to humility, is a requisite for the assimilation of the spirit of Christ, the divine nature which God bestows upon His sons. The moment pride creeps in, the Christliness of man as God's reflection becomes obscured, loss of dominion follows, and footsteps must be retraced.

Christ Jesus said (Luke 14:11), "Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted." This was a statement of law, an invariable sequence which cannot be escaped. It followed the parable in which the Master warned the guests at a Pharisee's dinner not to sit down in "the highest room" when bidden to a wedding lest they be asked to go to a lower one, but to sit first in the lowest room, that the host might bid them go up higher. Jesus was evidently illustrating the order of spiritual unfoldment as the Science of Christianity develops to human consciousness the truth of man's perfection and dominion.

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