Article November 8, 1952 Issue

UNPRECARIOUS JOY

HELEN M. EASTMAN

In one of Mary Baker Eddy's letters to a branch church—letters rich in counsel and guidance—is this loving admonition: "So let us meekly meet, mercifully forgive, wisely ponder, and lovingly scan the convulsions of mortal mind, that its sudden sallies may help us, not to a start, but to a tenure of unprecarious joy" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 201).

Who has not experienced the sudden sallies of mortal mind—injustice, anger, hatred, jealousy, disloyalty, dishonesty—flaring up without apparent cause and always tempting us to believe that error is a person instead of the illusion and distortion of so-called mortal mind. Mankind's rights to joy and happiness often seem to be of doubtful tenure, exposed to the constant risks and threats of mortal mind. But under the government of divine Mind man, as the son of God, has "a tenure of unprecarious joy." Only as we recognize the truth of man's relationship to God and the harmony of all ideas can we effectively carry out the four steps which are outlined above by our Leader and which are designed to help us push on to a constant realization of the presence of joy.

Those who have had long experience as Christian Science practitioners sometimes say that many of the problems they are asked to solve and the sicknesses they are asked to heal have their origin in wrong concepts of relationship. Christian Science teaches us that true relationships exist in Spirit, God, and are characterized by perfect harmony, mutual affection, tenderness, co-operation, all the attributes of God. In true relationship one individual cannot injure another, cannot rob him of his God-reflected joy. All ideas are held together in love by divine law, which cannot be interrupted or broken.

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