In the epistle to the Hebrews it is written, "Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us." How cogent is this appeal in its directness, and emphasized by its associated ideas! And it has lost none of its application in the conditions obtaining today.

In his preparation for a race an athlete may be obliged to undergo a strenuous and sustained course of training. Essentials have always to be kept well in view. For the accomplishment of his task he recognizes that his whole thought and energy must be devoted to it. No sacrifice can be considered too great. Whatever would impede his advancement has to be discarded, and whatever would expedite progress keenly cultivated.

All who have named the name of Christ have entered upon a definite course—the straight and narrow way of Truth. And the course is spiritual, the way the Master trod. Its signposts are spiritual intuitions, inspirational indicators. The goal is the realization in individual consciousness of the kingdom of heaven—harmony.

Concurrent with the recognition of man's perfect spiritual origin one becomes a participant in the race towards to goal of perfection. Mortal mind has sought to impose many dead-weights—beliefs of heredity, temperament, climate, contagion, fear. Whatever form they assume, all such impediments have to be discarded in order to reach the goal.

The habits of dwelling in thought on past errors or on their probable development at some future date are both subtle and destructive. These habits are robbers of peace and harmony. They can become the "burdens borne without aid," for mankind seems to cling tenaciously to them, and not infrequently through ignorance of their disastrous effects.

To hold in thought past sickness, grief, or accident serves to keep an open mental wound, and tends to have them manifested anew. Whilst recognizing sickness as error, the image may be allowed to lie dormant in the consciousness instead of being completely destroyed, and through the changing suggestions of mortal mind, that thought may later on mesmerize the individual into fear, doubt, and discouragement—destructive conditions of thought which must be blotted out.

How futile to cling to a so-called past error, when it is impossible to go back to the past to handle it! The issue therefore becomes narrowed down to a present belief in a past error, and that is how it is to be dealt with. One should never stop to parley with error at any time. It is at no time a reality, nor a part of God's child. Then why attach it to one's self or to anyone? It is only in the acceptance of error as real that the individual clothes it with seeming power.

Sickness and sin have no intelligence and no law to support them, and consequently have no reality. When they are blotted out of human thought, they cease to exist as beliefs. Their nothingness is exposed and their sting is then withdrawn. The obstacles to health and harmony are found in the corporeal falsities which must be forsaken. The power of choice is within the right of the individual.

Our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, repeatedly emphasizes in her writings the paramount necessity of guarding thought. In "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" she writes (p. 146), "A Christian Scientist never mentally or audibly takes the side of sin, disease, or death;" and again, "He lays his whole weight of thought, tongue, and pen in the divine scale of being—for health and holiness."

Breaking away from a material sense of self and of time, men are free to lay hold of their true selfhood in the likeness of God, and their God-given inheritance of life, health, and harmony. As the poet expresses it:

Instead of entertaining these two marauding beliefs of past and future we find our Saviour—the Christ, Truth—which sets thought free, uplifting it into the reality of being.

The only power must be recognized as inhering in Spirit. Man never was and never will be subject to the fleeting vagaries of time, nor to the varying limitations of the flesh. Man is the reflection of Spirit, unchanging, immutable, and perfect, He never touches at any point the changeable and finite.

Glimpsing the nature of his real selfhood, one seeks the divine source of his life, God. In spite of the opposite evidence, he strives to see the perfect man. His thought is thus transformed, and, becoming released from the weights of belief in matter, is ushered into the boundless realm of Spirit. Through this rejection of the counterfeit sense one finds his at-one-ment with God.

Let the erroneous past and future be buried in their own nothingness, where they cannot beguile and steal the precious moments which belong to God! To commune with our heavenly Father is to uplift thought into the realization of Love's ever-presence and all-power, where the darts of evil cannot penetrate. All of good, joy, and harmony are present now for us to utilize and to enjoy.

In "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 328) Mrs. Eddy writes: "He alone ascends the hill of Christian Science who follows the Way-shower, the spiritual presence and idea of God. Whatever obstructs the way,—causing to stumble, fall, or faint, those mortals who are striving to enter the path,—divine Love will remove; and uplift the fallen and strengthen the weak. Therefore, give up thy earth-weights."