Article October 3, 1970 Issue

One Divine Standard of Living

NANCY JOY PERKINS

The necessity to maintain some standard of living is constantly with us. Whether one is an earning member of a young family setting up a home, a business executive representing his firm, or an individual serving mankind, one's economic status often seems to be precarious. But is one's standard of living really determined by personal circumstances? Mrs. Eddy notes that "custom, education, and fashion form the transient standards of mortals," Science and Health, p. 247; but she shows us how to look through the changing mortal sense of existence to find the true standard.

Christian Science reveals that all creation is the effect of one perfect cause. Mrs. Eddy defines "creator" as "Spirit; Mind; intelligence; the animating divine Principle of all that is real and good; self-existent Life, Truth, and Love; that which is perfect and eternal; the opposite of matter and evil, which have no Principle; God, who made all that was made and could not create an atom or an element the opposite of Himself." p. 583; As we accept the spiritual basis of life this definition presents, we begin to see ourselves and our world in a new light.

Since Spirit, Mind, could not create anything unlike itself, man in his true selfhood is spiritual, the perfect expression of the divine creator, effortlessly and wholly sustained by divine Principle, Love. Pondering the implications of this concept of life, we find we no longer identify ourself with the mortal ego struggling in a crowded and complex world. We see that our fears, desires, and compulsions have no identity, but are false beliefs evolved from a misconception of man and the universe. Mrs. Eddy says of this true selfhood, "Man was not created from a material basis, nor bidden to obey material laws which Spirit never made; his province is in spiritual statutes, in the higher law of Mind." p. 307;

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