VISION AND ENDURANCE

ELOISE PATTILLO HENDRICK

On a certain well-known scenic route in the western part of the United States, the train traveler passes through a series of tunnels, some long, some short, some quite similar to others; but eventually the train takes one into uninterrupted sunlight again.

Once a Christian Scientist who had traveled over this route found in it a helpful analogy to an illness which had lingered over a long period. Up to that time, healings through Christian Science treatment had been effected quickly, if not instantaneously. In this case there seemed to be periods of freedom followed by recurring attacks of the difficulty. It was exceedingly helpful in handling the temptations of depression and discouragement to remember that even when the series of tunnels seemed interminable and repetitious, progress was being made, and ultimately the uninterrupted light was visible. So it was in the case of illness. Such a perfect and complete healing came about that the suffering and all the details of the illness were erased from thought. It was a decisive proof that man, as God's idea, is forever untouched by a claim of imperfection.

In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy, in commenting upon the possibility of perceiving man's present perfection, observes with characteristic compassion (p. 573): "Take heart, dear sufferer, for this reality of being will surely appear sometime and in some way. There will be no more pain, and all tears will be wiped away." Because of the basic teaching of Christian Science that God is the only Life and substance and that man's identity is perfect and intact, one can demonstrate poise and spiritual stamina in the face of the most trying difficulty.

Endurance can mean not only bearing or putting up with adversity as would a martyr, but persisting in what one knows to be true and irreversible. Instead of thinking of oneself as a mortal, finite person trying to endure, it is more helpful to realize that man, the son of God, manifests the durability of Spirit. The spiritual idea, man's actual selfhood, is unassailable. Right endurance is demonstrated when the vision of man as the son of God takes possession of human consciousness and obliterates fear and its false consequences. This vision does not recognize error as real or as belonging to the reflection of divine Mind. It sees that in God's sight there is no evil to be endured or resisted, because God knows only good as present and expressed.

Truth endures; error does not. One prays correctly when he works from the standpoint of the omnipresence of infinite good, where there is nothing unlike or opposed to God, and consequently nothing to be changed or removed. True health persists, true beauty is unfading, supply is inexhaustible, safety is intact. All good is eternal. Mind unfolds without opposition or interruption, and Mind's expression, man, is therefore an unceasing witness to infinite good. The light of spiritual understanding enables us progressively to see the allness of God and His manifestation.

If one is tempted to believe, under the stress of some trial, that his efforts to overcome evil are futile and that he appears to be up against a stone wall, he can reverse such a despairing suggestion. The remedy is to know that because God is All, there is no stone wall of materiality, no obduracy of error, and that man, spiritual idea, is safe on the rock of Truth. In the words of Mrs. Eddy (Poems, p. 12),

"Thus Truth engrounds me on the rock,
Upon Life's shore,
'Gainst which the winds and waves
can shock,
Oh, nevermore!"

There is no static problem when we are working in Science. That in human experience which has felt the touch of Truth is never the same again. Even when the outward evidence indicates no change, the fact of progress is always true for us if we are faithfully working with divine Principle.

Just as the train traveler was constantly moving ahead, even though some tunnels resembled the ones before, so the individual working and praying according to divine Science, purifying and elevating thought, is progressing irresistibly into clearer views of reality. Such a one cannot be at a standstill, cannot retrograde; the law of his being is progress.

In the beautiful passage in Hebrews where Moses' faith is described, it is written (11:27), "He endured, as seeing him who is invisible." The Christly vision, invisible only to dull material belief, is clearly perceptible to spirituality. It is the vision of the spiritual facts of being, the perfection and indestructibility of all reality, enabling the student of Christian Science to endure, to continue in right thinking, regardless of delayed rewards. This vision enables us to see the glory of God constituting all being and all consciousness.

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