Human ambitions, widely variant and diverse as they are in kind and degree, are yet easily reduced to common terms. Their least common denominator is clearly to be found in the thought of self-assertion or self-expression. This betrays itself in the constant reaching out on the part of race and individual for more direct and positive mastery of itself and its destiny, seeking in countless directions for but one object, the dominion which men feel to be their right, though it be so far removed from their experience.
Mastery in others, every, man instinctively admires and craves for himself, tempering his admiration to the quality and value of the thing mastered. Above all else, thoughtful men, at least, pay deference to the man who is master of himself. Any lesser dominion is noble in the degree that it approaches this supreme control, which logically is the climax of all ambition. That this climax is so seldom recognized as such is simply because men are so bound up in their fevered striving for the petty objects of immediate and more pressing desire and need. And yet every stage of the unfoldment of human ambition prophesies as its inevitable, though it may be distant, goal, a state in which man is master of himself, possesses dominion over all the earth, and remains "subordinate alone to his Maker" (Science and Health, p. 518).
It is in terms identical with these, that the Christian Scientist describes the somewhat nearer goal of his desire and effort. His initial and very positive advantage rests in his method of more direct attack, and in his understanding that this state of being is actually attainable by the individual, irrespective of the slow ploddings of the race through its roundabout and uncertain ways toward the same goal.
The effectiveness of an ideal in human life depends primarily on the strength of the ambition which it creates. And yet, the more clearly defined one's conception of the end for which he labors, the more intelligent will his labor be. The more legitimately confident and expectant the attitude toward one's desire, the speedier will be its attainment. Advantage in these points explains in great measure the Christian Scientist's larger mastery of those conditions which once served only to confound and delay him, as they still do so many others.
The idealism of Christian Science has in it absolutely nothing of doubtful moonshine or star-gazing; it is rather clear-sighted adherence to an exalted and definite purpose. It involves hard, painstaking, persistent work, and perhaps the "bleeding footsteps" as well. Its vindication is already assured in the fact that its followers are gaining larger mastery over themselves and their surroundings than they had before attained. Jesus said, "Seek ye first the kingdom," the kingdom which is within you. It is direct obedience to this direct command, gladly and intelligently followed, which speeds any man and every man who yields it, toward this much-desired goal. Dominion is God's final gift to man, and embraces all others.
For centuries the Christian church has been urging upon men this command of Christ, but has failed ever to lift faith to the full and open view of its true meaning or to awaken in men's hearts any positive hope of its attainment except in an uncertain future. The outcome of such method or lack of method has too often been disappointed faith, deferred hope, half-hearted endeavor, or at very best a temporary and one-sided dominion. The saints of history have been marvels of devotion and sacrifice in spiritual attainment, but they still remain, physically and mentally, at the mercy of every ill wind that blows. They have scaled the very peaks of religious aspiration and yet have continued to be the slaves of their own bodies. The man who is truly master of himself is the rarest man in history.
The real value to us of Jesus' work as the Exemplar, does not rest in teaching us to endure our limitations unto the end and then to escape them by dying, or by shifting our burdens to other shoulders. It is rather to be found in his revelation of the absolute unity of man's spiritual ideal with God's real; and of God's real as the only real on earth or in heaven. The attitude toward God which Jesus constantly and consistently maintained was that of a son and heir who enjoyed his Father's immediate good pleasure. His message to us is that we too are sons and joint heirs with him of the same inheritance. His whole life and example refuted the assumption that we are heirs in exile, banished from our right estate, to which we can return only through some human method and the kindly deliverance of that "last enemy." death.
Jesus' life was that of a God-governed man who knew no other loyalty than that of absolute obedience; that is, of constant assertion of his spiritual selfhood and insistence on spiritual reality. His reward was a self-mastery without parallel, dominion over all the earth, and final exaltation as God's chosen son,— the Messiah or Christ. The coming of Christian Science is in further revelation of this same message and method. Its rewards are the same in kind if not in degree. Its ideal, considered both as the "standard of excellence" and as the "goal of endeavor" is the same,— nothing less than the mind which was in Christ, expressing itself in the Christ-life, the God-governed man.
A most important feature of man's divine inheritance is that he is heir of a Father who can neither share his throne nor abdicate it to another. The son, therefore, can have nothing, be nothing, do nothing, except through his oneness with the Father. In His name, man has unlimited capabilities of power, freedom, and resource. Enduring freedom is to be found only in this unity and through the obedience it necessitates. At the outset of his new career, therefore, this seeming paradox confronts the Christian Scientist. To attain truest self-control he must first get away from self; that is, from the false thing which he has been calling self.
It is a significant thing that, in popular theology, self-control has come of very necessity to mean nothing more than self-restraint. True control involves directive power, government, and mastery. Restraint attempts merely to check or hold back another assumed power. So far-reaching is this distinction, that it is characteristic throughout both method and result in the theologies to which they pertain.
The popular theories of self-restraint which start out on the assumption that all,
In Adam's fall
We sinned
conclude with the fallacy that man is inherently bad, and that his body is a prison-house for his soul. It exalts the appetite, the temper, the nerves, the flesh as independent powers, and then unites these supposed "parts of a man" in a conspiracy to his undoing. It thus involves man in a perpetual conflict of forces, in which evil is too often the winner.
The theology of Christian Science, on the contrary, recognizes but one power and one Mind which consciously directs its own activities through its many manifestations, holds these individually intact, co-ordinates them, and makes them effective. It makes the body the "humble servant of the restful Mind" (Science and Health, p. 119), all its parts reflecting the substance and the doings of Mind. In this same unity it enlists all the influences and tendencies which play any legitimate part in human life, and annihilates all others.
Popular thought, by insisting on the actuality of matter and its flock of evils and consulting only material sense, makes thus a confidant of its worst foe, fights on forever, and always has something to fight. Christian Science, by denying the real existence of matter and appealing to spiritual sense, replaces a false sense of self by a spiritual selfhood which responds to the control of good only.
Popular theology creates and perpetuates its own enemies and then labors to forgive or to endure them. Christian Science teaches a man how to love his supposed enemies and so lose them; how to live at peace not only with his neighbor and his conscience, but with his digestion as well.
Old theology finds its readiest prayer in "Help me to be patient and strong to endure." The Christian Scientist prays rather, "Help me to overcome." Better yet, Christian Science teaches men how to overcome.
Self-restraint ordinarily means little more than ability to control one's temper and one's tongue, to be calm in adversity and composed in defeat, to be prudent and serene; in short, to hold one's self in check against what it believes to be a natural tendency or temptation to self-assertion and violence. True spiritual self-control goes farther, for it dominates the bodily functions as surely as it does those which are purely social. It involves no man in mental tussle and contention with his appetite or temper, with an abusive neighbor or with adverse business conditions, in the effort to restrain and subdue them. It enables him rather to rise above the arena of such contention. It empowers a man to shake off the lethargy of exhaustion, of lazy compromise or of weak-kneed indolence, and to assert his God-given and God-governed manhood, untrammeled by complaisance in silly bonds of sin's devising. It lends no ear to perverted though plausible pleas to "suffer it," a little longer, "to be so now." It enables a man to stop calling himself a "miserable sinner," and to prove himself otherwise by living otherwise. In its every field of influence it concedes nothing to fear, and asks nothing of will-power. It is too wise to force opportunity or place, and cannot be crowded in or out of its own place. It is not envious of another's preferment or sore over its own defeat, but pursues diligently its own high calling and makes every move a move upward.
Thus, in every act of his life, whether it pertain to his bodily peace, to his social equanimity and helpfulness, to his business success, to his mental integrity, or to the unfoldment of spiritual aspiration and understanding, the true Christian Scientist is learning that the only lawful ambition or self-assertion is in the expression of spiritual selfhood. Every human ambition is to be judged on this basis of the conception of self which is behind it and asserting itself through it. Goodness is the fundamental attribute of greatness, and man finds his true place and fits into it, and there attains his lawful ambition and dominion only by and through the path to goodness, through direct and ready responsiveness to the good, to the suggestion and control of the one divine Mind which is God. This is having that Mind which was in Christ Jesus, whose supremacy determines the unity and allness of good,— the kingdom of God among men.
What, then, is the practical issue? To know and to have none other than the one Mind is to concede in one's thinking no other source of thought or motive. It is to abjure all unhealthful, mean, untrue, or unworthy thinking, because such consciousness of error is false thinking, is illusive. It is to know and successfully to assert and maintain against all aggression the fact that true consciousness is simply consciousness of Truth, that it is therefore pure, sacred, and constant, and cannot be befouled or become the battle-ground of conflicting mental forces.
It is to know and to prove that thought cannot be wrenched or seduced away from its proper service, to minister to or to embody evil suggestion; that impersonal, suppositional error has no intelligence to usurp standing and respectability for itself by using man's mentality as an agent. It is constantly to turn thought from the material to the spiritual, knowing that the only true law is God's law, the only natural trend or tendency in human life is toward God.
The operation of true ambition is therefore in the self-assertion of the divine Mind, impelling man to realize and to do the divine will. Man's part in "this manifestation is obedience pure and simple. Herein is true self-control which keeps man in the channel of his natural growth or unfoldment, and opens up to him all the tremendous opportunities and responsibilities of his divine sonship. Only through this obedient conformity with law, this hewing to the line of his spiritual integrity, can man hope to attain this highest ideal. As he approaches this realization, the relative and individual movements of God's ideas must become to him as harmonious as the circling of the stars in their courses.
This is the message and the example of our Leader: "He is saved through Christ, Truth, who gains self-knowledge, self-control, and the kingdom of heaven within himself—within his own consciousness." "To live so as to keep human consciousness in constant relation with the divine, the spiritual and eternal, is to individualize infinite power,— and this is Christian Science" (Mrs Eddy's Address to the Concord Church, July, 1904).
