Article September 24, 1966 Issue

Living the Beatitudes

MARY LEE GOUGH NAY

To learn how to live the Beatitudes is to learn the secret of happiness. The very word "beatitude" means "a state of utmost bliss," and "to beatify" is "to make supremely happy." The Beatitudes are not directives to do something but gracious promises accompanying the task the human mind often finds difficult to compass: the task of being Christlike. They state basic spiritual law.

To live the love and truth that Christ Jesus understood and manifested, and from which his marvelously successful lifework emerged, demonstrating the possibility of full salvation for all men, is the most exacting undertaking for the Christian. It is also the most rewarding. It is from his living of the Christly law, spontaneous and never failing in its action, that the Christian Scientist draws his healing power. The Principle of this healing is Love. Living it demands spiritual discipline.

Matthew records that after preaching the Sermon on the Mount, which includes the Beatitudes, Christ Jesus began his healing work; he put forth his hand and healed the leper. To live the Master's precepts is to put off impulses inherent in the mortal, carnal sense of life. Then man as God's living, loving, truthful reflection will appear. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes, "Science will declare God aright, and Christianity will demonstrate this declaration and its divine Principle, making mankind better physically, morally, and spiritually."^{ Science and Health, p. 466;}

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