Article July 10, 1971 Issue

Triumphing over Loneliness

SUZANNE P. CHAMBERLIN

What heartwarming memories are evoked when one is examining an old family photograph album or reminiscing about family good times! If such reminiscing is untainted by the wistful yearning to return to "the good old days," it can occasion grateful recognition of the joyous and progressive unfoldment of ever-present good.

But what of those whose happy memories stand in painful contrast to the loneliness of today? Christian Science comes with the glorious message that no one is doomed by the false beliefs of age, circumstance, or temperament to fill out long empty days in wistful loneliness. It teaches the ever-presence of good, its nowness, allness, and spiritual inevitability, and it supplies all that means abiding comfort and joyous purposeful living.

Mrs. Eddy, who in the years before her discovery of Christian Science experienced heartrending friendlessness, isolation, and even enforced separation from her only child, compassionately points the way to the recognition of man's ever complete and joyous nature. Her illuminating answer to the question "What is man?" in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, provides in its first sentence a fundamental starting point: "Man is not matter; he is not made up of brain, blood, bones, and other material elements." It also contains the statement, "Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique."^{Science and Health, p. 475;}