It is the habit of the human mind to search diligently for excuses. If there is one thing from which it shrinks it is being compelled to admit its faults, or to reveal its weaknesses. So strong indeed is its revulstion from this that it will, on occasion, tear down the veil in a sort of ecstasy of bravado. Ordinarily, however, it prefers a policy of extenuation. Like the pirates of Aves, "A-swing with good tobacco in a net between the trees," it deadens its intelligence to the dangers of the course upon which it has embarked, forgetful that, as the same song says, "But Scripture saith, an ending to all fine things must be." In short, sooner or later, every man has to face squarely the same problem. It is this, that "the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh;" and the realization of what this means must force home upon every one who does not shut, or at any rate partially close, his eyes to it, the significance of that other warning by Paul, "For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do."

Polycarp insisted to the proconsul that he could not turn from good to evil in a day, and, no doubt, the Christians of Smyrna were even more convinced that they could not turn from evil to good in many days. "The divine demand, 'Be ye therefore perfect,'" Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 253-254 of Science and Health, "is scientific, and the human footsteps leading to perfection are indispensable." But, on page 9 of the same book, she warns her readers against hesitation and the disinclination to take those footsteps, when she says, "Are you willing to leave all for Christ, for Truth, and so be counted among sinners? No! Do you really desire to attain this point? No! Then why make long prayers about it and ask to be Christians, since you do not care to tread in the footsteps of our dear Master?" Human beings, just because they are human, cannot avoid these human footsteps. But they can avoid bargaining with Principle over taking them, and they can take them fearlessly and gladly, and not hesitatingly and perforce. Because a man needs to be clothed, he does not need to be clothed upon with vanity, and because he needs to eat and drink, he does not need to impart to eating and drinking any taint of sensuous appetite. The effort of the human being to turn from evil to good is, at all times, so deliberately accomplished that he need feel under no obligation to carry any unnecessary weights.

In taking even his first footsteps the student of Christian Science should keep his ultimate goal steadfastly before him. Mrs. Eddy makes this very clear indeed, on page 426 of Science and Health, when she says, "The discoverer of Christian Science finds the path less difficult when she has the high goal always before her thoughs, than when she counts her footsteps in endeavoring to reach it." Dwelling perpetually, as some people are apt to, on the necessity for suffering is almost bound to produce suffering, and, in the same way, insistence on the necessity for human footsteps, when the motive behind the insistence is the fabrication of an excuse for dwelling in them, can only end in painful and unnecessary delay.

Any responsible human being knows that human footsteps in the pilgrimage from the flesh to the spiritual are unavoidable, so unavoidable that it is scarcely necessary to talk about them. The philosophy of the nursery, "I can be good at any time," is bounded by the nursery walls. Experience answers the child in the word of the epistle to the Romans, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" What Paul meant was, of course, sufficiently clear. He had learned that you could not believe in the flesh without suffering the pains of the flesh to the exact extent of your belief. Therefore he was in no hurry to give any unnecessary force to the belief he desired so earnestly to dispense with. He knew, as he made clear, that a man must take the human footsteps, and would take them probably all too slowly but he did not propose to add to that handicap the handicap of exaggerating the mesmerism of the flesh. Nor did Mrs. Eddy, because she knew that the human being could not turn from darkness to light in a moment, ever propose that, whether his progress was fast or slow, he should take holidays, at intervals, from the pursuit of Truth, and temporarily cease working and praying, on the ground that such periods of rest constituted these inevitable footsteps.

Every physical manifestation is, of course, an expression of the human mind, since matter is nothing but the subjective condition of this mind. What, then, are termed human footsteps are those inevitable mental stages in the development of the individual's understanding of Principle. Since matter is merely a phenomenon, there is, in reality, no such thing as material food. It would, none the less, be in the highest degree unscientific for any human being to attempt to avoid the human footstep of eating while learning that material food is not an absolute necessity, but only an argument by which the human mind is helped in sustaining physical health and life. One of the first demonstrations which Christ Jesus made was that of his ability to do without material food. It was perfectly scientific for Jesus to do this, because he knew how to do it; but it would be as equally unscientific for the man who did not know how to do it, to impair his health and risk his life in a demonstration beyond his understanding. "Christ, Truth," Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 442 of Science and Health, "gives mortals temporary food and clothing until the material, transformed with the ideal, disappears, and man is clothed and fed spiritually."

The example of food could, of course, be indefinitely extended. Eating is only one of the concessions which the student of divine metaphysics makes, entirely scientifically, while he is working out the various problems with which he is faced. Where he draws the line is necessarily a question between himself and Principle alone, since only he knows how genuine is the necessity for each concession, or human footstep. Some students necessarily progress more rapidly than others: all leave their footprints in the sands of what they regard as time, to be washed into oblivion as their understanding of Truth increases. But one and all are faced with the necessity for never reducing these human footsteps to human excuses. Christ Jesus' own words to John, when that teacher showed his surprise that he should have sought him out in order to be baptized by him, "Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness," are, when the full intent of them is grasped, some of the most solemn in the whole of the New Testament. This "Suffer it to be so now" has been made the excuse for an amount of hypocrisy which would be appalling if it were not scientifically unreal. At the same time, as a man sows, so does he reap, and any one who stretches the meaning of the words an inch further than their legitimate meaning, to cover his own weakness or to silence his own conscience, is simply engaged in laying up for himself "wrath against the day of wrath."

Frederick Dixon.