Article December 8, 1956 Issue

THE PURITY OF LIFE

PERCY FRANK GRINSTEAD

In human affairs men and women of good will think of purity as an essential quality of their lives; whilst those responsible for national and municipal government make sanative laws and regulations with the object of purifying and preventing the adulteration or pollution of food, air, and water. This human activity expresses a right but limited concept of purity, which is in reality a quality of Mind, God, therefore unlimited.

When Christ Jesus said (Matt. 5:8), "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God," he was not uttering a beautiful platitude, but was passing on to his disciples something which he knew from his own rich experience was true. Where death appeared to others, his pure consciousness saw only Life. When the blind, the lame, and the sick came to him for healing, he saw in Science the perfect man, made in the image and likeness of God. His mission was to bring to the world the true knowledge of God, which dispels the darkness of ignorance and enables men to see Him as their heavenly Father, divine Love. Such vision can come only as the human mind is cleansed of sin and the evils of the flesh.

Error that sometimes seems to cloud our vision has many phases, but basically it is a denial of the allness of God, a mortal belief that man can be separated from Him. Mary Baker Eddy knew the falsity of this belief. She says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 196): "The sweet, sacred sense and permanence of man's unity with his Maker, in Science, illumines our present existence with the ever-presence and power of God, good. It opens wide the portals of salvation from sin, sickness, and death."

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

LOVING ONE'S NEIGHBOR AS ONESELF