Editorial January 24, 1970 Issue

It Rests with Us

Alan A. Aylwin

How quickly we enter the kingdom of heaven, the realm of spiritual harmony, rests with us. Salvation from pain, sorrow, and limitation must be attained through individual effort. Although one can extend a helping hand to a brother temporarily mired in a problem, in the long run through his own work each of us must gain the mastery over materiality in all its forms. The most elementary sense of justice should tell us that no one can ease his way vicariously into spiritual bliss.

The misinterpretation of certain New Testament passages has led many to believe that Christ Jesus died on the cross to appease the wrath of a manlike Deity and to pay the debt of sin for the whole world—that mere faith in the power of his sacrifice can cancel the effects of all one's previous wrong thoughts and acts. This and other hypotheses have hidden from mortals the true way to spiritual freedom. Mrs. Eddy writes, "This truth is, that we are to work out our own salvation, and to meet the responsibility of our own thoughts and acts; relying not on the person of God or the person of man to do our work for us, but on the apostle's rule, 'I will show thee my faith by my works.'"^{Christian Healing, p. 5;}

It should be obvious that some understanding of the nature of God and the real man must be attained before one can begin his march from material sense to spiritual perception, from illusion to reality. Jesus' words "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth"^{John 4:24;} indicate that God is infinitely more than a magnified man, and that He is worshiped— understood and adored—through developed spiritual understanding, and not through mere ceremony or theological formulas.