Article September 13, 1952 Issue

PASSPORT

L. PAULINE MERRITT

The traveler who carries a valid passport enters distant countries with confidence. Indeed, he is not permitted to leave his own country without this documentary evidence of his identity.

"Do you have your passports with you? Are they handy? You will need them today." This reminder one morning from the courier of a group caught the attention of a Christian Scientist. Here, she thought, is another country that must be satisfied as to my identity.

Then she remembered that Mary Baker Eddy had employed the idea of passport to advance a pertinent truth. In an article called "Vainglory" she says, referring to Christ Jesus' example (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 270), "Fidelity to his precepts and practice is the only passport to his power; and the pathway of goodness and greatness runs through the modes and methods of God." Surely, here was a passport of great importance to the Christian Scientist, and she asked herself if she had it with her. She was aware that mere travel and living abroad would be vain unless it forwarded her journey from sense to Soul, from a material sense of existence up to the illumined consciousness of being identified as a son of God and at home in God. Moreover, humanity would be truly blessed in proportion to her recognition that God is the only power and that in Him there are no border lines, no divisions.

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