SOUL HEALS ALL YEARNING

Most people at some time have yearned to reach a goal which seemed to them immensely worth while. When this intense desire has first wakened in them, they have started out with high hopes: their days have been filled and their hearts thrilled with new zest; they have perhaps found the first steps pleasant and easy. And then difficulties have arisen. Sometimes the yearning may have been for a happy companionship which has been severed, or for a loved place which is far away, or for a period of fruition for honest effort and worthy accomplishment. To all these conditions a better acquaintance with God and man, as revealed in Christian Science, can bring healing.

When Jesus of Nazareth first started his public ministry, the multitudes flocked to hear him, but at the cross they fell away. At last his dearest disciples slept, when they should have been watching. "Could ye not watch with me one hour?" Jesus asked (Matt. 26:40). But, as Mary Baker Eddy writes in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 48), "There was no response to that human yearning, and so Jesus turned forever away from earth to heaven, from sense to Soul."

Christian Science is the Science of Soul. It teaches that God is Soul, perfect and complete, utterly satisfied. It teaches, as the Bible teaches, that God made man in His likeness. On page 519 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy says, "Deity was satisfied with His work." Because God is satisfied, man, His reflection, is satisfied. God does not yearn, for God has all; therefore man in God's likeness does not yearn, for he too has all that is good, as God's reflection. Man does not yearn for person, place, or thing; man does not even yearn for God, for man is always in His presence and always in obedience to Him. Man in the image and likeness of Soul, the beloved of God, exists always at the point of perfect satisfaction.

Again, Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (p. 258), "God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis." Satisfaction is this eternal upsoaring from joy to joy, from glory to glory. It is no mere absence of longing, complacent and tedious; it is the active recognition that here and now divine, ever-present good is forever unfolding to man's consciousness new forms of beauty and interest, of love and health.

In John's Gospel (12:27,28) Jesus is recorded as saying: "Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name." And later Jesus prayed (17:5), "And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was."' Relinquishing all human yearning, turning from the troubled human sense of soul with its turmoil of mortal aims and affections to the serene glory of Soul—the glory which man reflects from everlasting to everlasting Jesus passed untouched through the agony of the crucifixion, and with his resurrection and ascension won an eternal victory. Jesus was the way for all men, and all men by turning wholly from sense, which yearns, to Soul, which is satisfied, can begin at once, like Jesus, to experience victorious living. As we read in the Christian Science Hymnal (No. 66),

As we let these great facts of the Science of Soul occupy our consciousness, the new heaven and earth do prevail. As we prayerfully insist on the enduring satisfaction of God and man, instead of alternating between weariness and longing, we find God governing harmoniously and naturally our daily activities; we find these activities fresh and interesting; we perform them with zest and spontaneity. Persistently knowing that God is present and guiding us, we find ourselves too busy enjoying today to be anxious about tomorrow. Under this new regimen of vigorously contented thought, long-standing diseases often give way to health.

All that was truly worth while in the objects of our former desires and disappointments now comes to us without struggle or unrest in new and entirely satisfying ways. "The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it" (Prov. 10:22). And whatever other kind of yearning there may be for person, place, or thing yields to the healing balm of the facts of Soul acknowledged.

In Revelation 22 we read of "a pure river of water of life, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb;" and "on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month." In the Science of Soul the currents of spiritual life flow pure of all human yearning, and man exists forever in the presence of divine Love, forever satisfied. This Science is operating to bless with enduring satisfaction every one of us here and now.