Editorial April 3, 1954 Issue

STRENGTH REDEFINED

Helen Wood Bauman

Ordinarily one thinks of strength in terms of physical power and endurance and as expressed through the medium of muscles and bodily structure. But Christian Science redefines strength. It reveals God as imparting strength directly to consciousness—not through flesh, but through the energy of spiritual ideas and qualities understood. Mary Baker Eddy says in her "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 358), "Self-knowledge, humility, and love are divine strength." The honest practice of these virtues brings one spontaneous vigor, which is natural to man in God's likeness—strength which obliterates both moral and physical weakness. One can free himself from either kind of weakness in proportion as his thought is animated by Spirit.

How simple is God's way of imparting strength in contrast with so-called mortal mind's method, with its intricate system of muscles and sinews and other material means, its presumptuous claim to life and power in matter.

We need spiritual vigor in order to resist and cope with our human problems, physical and otherwise. And Mrs. Eddy's precept that "self-knowledge, humility, and love are divine strength" shows us the right direction in which to turn in order to find that vigor. Self-knowledge may be considered in either of two ways: as knowledge of the true self, replete with spiritual power, or as an honest appraisal of the human self, with all that needs to be corrected in it. Humility accepts the true sense of self as the only reality of manhood, and it abandons the false sense of self with its sins and fears and limitations. Love demonstrates the eternal unity of man with God, infinite Love, and the spiritual strength that accompanies the understanding of that unity in Science.

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