The True Center

BY BERT POOLE.

Christian Science reveals the fact that nearly all men are egotists; that is, the world, society, business, God (when He is thought of), and all matters and affairs, center in the little I's of the world; in the mortals who comprise its billions of population.

As this is true of individual men, so is it true of bodies of men, communities, states, and nations. From individuals up to nations it seems to mortal thought as if the only destiny to which man is fated is to be born of woman, to struggle through the growing period under the rule and heel of parents and educators, and then to be pushed out into the world to shift for himself, uncared for except by a few of his relatives and friends. Millions of such are daily carrying burdens of work, of trouble, of mortal fret and ferment, and the wonder is that the paternal institutions of the states and countries of the world are not many times their present size and filled to overflowing with the unfortunates who know not the Truth, hence bear life's troubles in sorrow and calm despair.

There are many to whom the Truth of being has never come. To a vast majority of mortals life hangs on a thread, and the constant expectation is that its slender fabric may be snapped at any time. The only thought of happiness possessed by most of earth's millions lies in the "reward" they are to have in heaven, after the resurrection, or in some way, beyond the grave. But in whatever channel the thoughts of mortals flow, the conclusions are turned inward upon themselves. I know a man in business who dreads business failure as the worst calamity that could befall him, his dread being occasioned by the thought of what his acquaintances would think of him. A long list of imaginary ills are conjured up by seemingly intelligent people who have proved those imaginings many times in their lives to be false beliefs, but who are so self-centered that new forms of conjecture, worry, and disaster appear in constant succession to torture them into the belief that "all is vanity and vexation of spirit."

Many noble works are being done in the name of the Master by the very ones who suffer the tortures of mortal illness and who go about doing good with sad hearts and the weary footsteps occasioned by unwholeness of the body, and they cry out, even while stretching out helping hands to others, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

But, weary ones, take courage. There has come to this age a wonderful revelation,—a Key that unlocks the Scripture and illumines the teachings of Jesus. The works that he did, the new light shows can be done now. The sick are healed, disease is stayed, sorrow is made to flee away and new hope dawns upon the weary ones whose thoughts have so long been turned inward and earthward.

"Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" teaches that poor mortals have been worshiping many gods instead of the one true living God, the Maker of the universe; that one divine Principle rules the universe, and that the image of God is being inverted by mortal men who turn their thoughts inward, make themselves to be little gods, and worship the graven image they have set up. We are led to discover what Jesus' mission really was. That he came to save man form sin, and to show the real man as a reflection of God, Spirit, Love, and perfect harmony; that this poor self-centered, scared-of-his-shadow fellow, called man, is no man at all, but simply a counterfeit of man made in the image and likeness of God.

Jesus came to turn men's thoughts toward God, and to show them how to partake now of the divine harmony of being and not to wait till death to enter heaven. Mortals must ascertain what and where the true center of existence really is. In Christian Science they will find that it is not that God enters our body and there abides, but that man really dwells in and reflects God. All the seeming inharmony of sin and sickness is shown to be a mortal belief, and when man turns his thought from the troubles, sins, illness, and pleasures of self-centered existence to God or Good, he finds that all the old things were untrue, that the only true life is God, the only real substance is Spirit which God is and which man reflects.

Thus is the saying of Jesus actually being demonstrated by Christian Scientists to-day that "He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it" in Truth, Life, Love, the divine center of Being.

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Christian Science is Practical Christianity

January 11, 1900

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