In these days, when hygiene and sanitation are among the leading topics of discussion, we hear much talk about the necessity of a pure atmosphere for physical and moral health. The supreme importance and the far-reaching influence of our mental atmosphere is a subject unfortunately receiving too scant attention.
Probably there is nothing that so greatly hinders the living of a spiritual life— nothing that so holds us down—as the consciousness of being surrounded by persons who are not in sympathy with the things that are highest and best. To take the extreme of the case—we cannot fail to recognize that the effort to raise to a purer life one who has lived for years amidst base and degrading associations, must of necessity be infinitely harder to lift higher than one who has dwelt amongst the good, the true and beautiful. The mental atmosphere, in the former instance, has warped and poisoned the mortal mind, or to speak metaphysically, has so materialized it that the beliefs of sense are real and vivid, while the things of the Spirit are unreal and unknown.
In "Science and Health," Mrs. Eddy refers to the want of sincerity of many who partake of the cup of communion with Him, whom they thus profess to follow. Much, if not all, of such insincerity, may be traced to the fear of public opinion, engendered by the mental atmosphere surrounding us. Consciously or unconsciously, the want of sympathy with, or antagonism to, the practice of a real, live Christianity—the practical, every-day living in the Spirit of the Master—is felt by us, and the consequent fear of what people will say—the shrinking of sense from the taking up of the cross—induces the sin of faithlessness and inconsistancy.
