Article August 6, 1955 Issue

THE INCENTIVE IN CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

CYRIL H. GOLDING

The right approach to gardening is to sow seeds, to plant, to prune, to cultivate, and so to love the beauty and fragrance of the flowers that when they bloom the garden will be a riot of color and scent. The weeds will be eliminated, because as the gardener discovers them growing, he will uproot and destroy them. In addition to any action on the gardener's part, the carpet of beautiful flowers will itself help to crowd out the weeds. Thus their elimination will become less and less a burden. The weeds will not find space between the flowers to flourish.

The right approach to Christian Science is to realize that good, because it is a reality, is to be cultivated for its own sake and to the exclusion of evil. The application of Science is not a question of beauty outweighing the ugly and sordid, but of proving that because beauty is an attribute of Life, the ugly and sordid are worthless. To rejoice that Love is omnipotent, without a single element of hate, is to use and study Christian Science to the glory of, and for the love of, God. But to use Christian Science solely in a continual effort to eliminate evil may result in a sense of emptiness and, above all, a feeling of the reality of evil.

In the writer's opinion one of the loveliest sentences Mary Baker Eddy wrote is this one in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 279): "It is the love of God, and not the fear of evil, that is the incentive in Science." Because evil is not a thing or a fact, but is a false way of thinking, its only hope of recognition is to persuade us of its importance and thereby to claim a major share of attention. It is the flowers of the garden that are important, and not the weeds. In the same way, it is love, joy, beauty, and holiness which are important, and not fear, disease, and evil.

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