In her "Miscellaneous Writings," Mary Baker Eddy makes this perceptive comment (p. 358): "Human pride is human weakness. Self-knowledge, humility, and love are divine strength." Who would not abandon human weakness for divine strength? Humility may seem difficult to attain in taking this step, but it becomes spontaneous when it is understood through Christian Science.

This Science explains true humility—the state of thought soonest reached by divine grace—as a perpetual quality of the real man, the man made in God's likeness. For God's man, the true identity of each one of us, has nothing and is nothing of himself but is dependent upon his Maker for his all.

Christ Jesus could maintain a state of humility because he understood and rejoiced in man's relation to God as His perfect image. Jesus once said (John 5:19,20): "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth."

Humility was natural to Jesus. He pointed out the need for spiritualization of character whereby men give up the hardness and arrogance of human pride in order to gain true humility and divine strength. He taught that there is but one good—God—and that to Him all credit for accomplishment must be given. The Master could do nothing of himself. Neither can we.

Pride is a robber. A quality of the carnal mind, it would claim ability, intelligence, and achievement as personal possessions. But with nothing greater than human personality for the source of accomplishment, the desirable qualities and capacities of humanity would be limited indeed.

Taking the position of Christian Science that all good derives from one Principle, God, and is expressed in man, one knows that everyone has an infinite source of intelligence and skill and power to draw upon. But to feel contempt for another's abilities holds one in a limited state of ability himself and cuts down his power to express God-given ability through compassion and humility. One can say truly that greatness in humanity appears in the measure that pride is absent in individual character and humility is present. Abraham Lincoln, discerning the limited nature of mortal man, had a favorite poem, the first line of which reads, "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"

No doubt Lincoln's discernment of the emptiness of mortal pride was one important reason for his greatness. He maintained humility in the face of his own remarkable intellectual capacities. And he was quick to credit the abilities of others. Perhaps his lowly birth, giving him nothing personal to be proud of, opened his consciousness to express freely the qualities of wisdom, intellectual vigor, and compassion that marked his contribution to the world.

While Lincoln did not know the Science of the extraordinary powers he expressed, he caught the spirit of that Science. His loyalty to his highest sense of moral responsibility was his way of worshiping God.

It was soon after the war between the states—the great trial of his country—that Mrs. Eddy discovered Christian Science and let the light of absolute Truth break upon the world scene. Her spiritual humility gave her access to the scientific understanding of man as inseparable from God, the one source of life, with every individual having the same Father as that known to the Master.

Lincoln freed the slaves. But Christian Science frees the proud. It destroys the blight of spiritual ignorance and mortal self-importance. It reveals man's true status. Mrs. Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 183): "Man is free born; he is neither the slave of sense, nor a silly ambler to the so-called pleasures and pains of self-conscious matter. Man is God's image and likeness; whatever is possible to God, is possible to man as God's reflection."

Whatever can be done for the world to free it from conflict and mortality must be done through humility. Pride can only close the door on this aim. God's family must be humbly seen as undivided, blessed by the impartial Father of all, and forever at peace.

So great are the powers of Spirit and so desperately needed in an age when mortal pride threatens to pervert the ascendancy of material science and use new knowledge to maim or to annihilate the race, that each Christian Scientist should gladly rid himself of every vestige of pride in order that true Science and true power may be manifested through him.

Humility is the answer to the threats of material destruction. With humility one can know that he can do nothing of himself but what he sees the Father do. He can reflect the self-knowledge and love that demonstrate divine power, which protects life and upholds the worth of every son of God.

Helen Wood Bauman