Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, has written that the most divine of all human experience is that of repentance. She writes in her Message to The Mother Church for 1900 (p. 15), "The Passover, spiritually discerned, is a wonderful passage over a tear-filled sea of repentance—which of all human experience is the most divine."

Repentance is often associated with extreme forms of sin, whereas everything that is not spiritual is a form of sin. Accordingly, are we not sinning while we consider existence as material, and ourselves as living in matter? A wrong view of existence includes more than actual sinful omissions or commissions. A habitual sense of being independent of Deity, with a will and an existence of our own, is a sin which all mortals need to repent of in greater or lesser degree.

Mrs. Eddy, in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 597), defines "will" in part as "the motive-power of error;" and it is clear that the majority of mankind are governed by human will, their own or another's. When through the teachings of Christian Science we are awakened to see that there is a divine Principle guiding and governing all real existence, and to perceive how far we have strayed through our ignorance of this divine fact, we let go the sense of self-sufficiency, self-will, and pride of opinion, and come upon the most divine of all human experiences—repentance, or a conscious surrender to God.

This holy experience is often, in the study of Christian Science, accompanied by the instantaneous healing of some physical trouble; and it always means regeneration or new birth. Our Leader writes in her article entitled "The New Birth" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 15): "The new birth is not the work of a moment. It begins with moments, and goes on with years; moments of surrender to God, of childlike trust and joyful adoption of good; moments of self-abnegation, self-consecration, heaven-born hope, and spiritual love." Students of Christian Science are not content with the memory of their first experience in the new birth, but are always anticipating ever fresh baptisms of the Spirit, and do not permit themselves to be mesmerized by a sense of routine, or a feeding upon the manna of yesterday's demonstrations.

A student of Christian Science who had for several years carried the conviction that a certain course of action was right for her to maintain, was suddenly made aware that divine Love had a purpose for her which was utterly contrary to the point of view she had accepted for years as the right one. When she saw this clearly, what had formerly seemed a sacrifice became a matter of joyous surrender to the will of God, and the peace and satisfaction which came from so clear an indication of the right course to pursue blotted out every other consideration. At that moment this student knew that a surrender to God was indeed a divine experience; that it was becoming again as a little child, with absolute trust in the "good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." St. John writes that "his [God's] commandments are not grievous." Any demand made upon us by divine Love is never grievous, and will always result in blessings beyond anything we could have planned for ourselves. Abraham showed his willingness to sacrifice his only son, but nothing was required of him but the sacrifice of materiality.

In the parable of the "pearl of great price," we are told that the merchant gave all that he had in exchange for that one pearl. If we sorrow over any surrender to God, it is because our treasure is not as yet in heaven, and because we are ignorant that the surrendering of a human concept of existence for divine ideas is simply the exchanging of shadows for actual substance. Christian Science enables us to prove this, for a right understanding of God is dynamic in its effect upon our present human experience,

as our Leader has written in one of her poems (Poems, p. 70).

Unless we are seeking continually for divine guidance, we may fall into the error of using our understanding of Christian Science for our own human advancement alone, instead of working for the advancement of the kingdom of God in human affairs, and the desire for prestige and the favor of our fellow men may supersede the desire to serve the race. A longing for human self-expression must be willing to yield to the purified and far more satisfying work of learning to express God.

In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed, "Not my will, but thine, be done," which Mrs. Eddy has translated as, "Let not the flesh, but the Spirit, be represented in me" (Science and Health, p. 33). Such a prayer continually in the heart would protect the follower of Truth from the temptation of worldly-mindedness, and would ensure the uninterrupted unfoldment of his divine destiny.

Let the self-willed and self-satisfied become willing just for one moment to be as meek as a little child, and they will find themselves at the gates of heaven. For as the Master said, "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." The one who has exalted himself must kneel before he can enter, and his mortal sense bow before the low door of humility. Then he can put on the beautiful garments of his divine sonship, and say with the Master, "I and my Father are one."