Article September 1, 2013

Could ye not watch with me one hour?

Frederick Dixon

Originally published in September 9, 1916 issue of The Christian Science Monitor

The secret of success is consecration. On page 462 of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy makes this supremely clear, when she explains that divine healing can only be demonstrated by means of a scientific adherence to Principle, though she goes on to insist that "There is nothing difficult nor toilsome in this task when the way is pointed out; but self-denial, sincerity, Christianity, and persistence alone win the prize, as they usually do in every department of life.” This is all so obvious that every one is willing enough to agree to it; and yet, in spite of this obviousness, no one plunges very deeply into the battle with or without learning the full force of Paul’s despairing saying, "For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do."

No one who understands anything at all about Principle is, of course, in the least deceived as to what this means, whether they are prepared to act up to it or not. What stands between every man and Spirit is the veil of matter, the lasciviousness of the flesh. When as Mrs. Eddy says, the effort is sincere enough, sufficiently persistent and supported by real self-denial, when, that is to say, the effort of the laborer in the vineyard is based on real consecration, this veil of the flesh can be rent. But when there is hesitation, a halting between the flesh and the Spirit, a sympathy with materiality, the veil of the flesh is apt, if even partially rent, to wrap itself about the intruder, as the spider's web enmeshes the fly, and then follows the wail, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

What is the body of this death except the belief in sentient matter? This material body is the subjective condition of material thought, and it is necessarily precisely as material as the mind which projects it. Mrs. Eddy writing, on pages 476-7 of Science and Health, of Christ Jesus' method of healing; says, "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick." This is the metaphysical, and the only metaphysical way of healing the sick. The purity of Jesus' consciousness enabled him to see that man had not a sentient material body. He resolved, in plain English, things into thoughts, and, as a consequence, he saw God's idea instead of its material counterfeit, and seeing this he was able to deliver the human being from his body of death, because the only body he was capable of accepting as real was a spiritual idea. This, however, was only possible to Jesus because he had, persistently and with sincerity, exercised that self-denial which is a denial of a material self.

Send a comment to the editors