AMONG the countless unlisted impositions of self, one which is subtly detrimental to progress in Christian Science is the habit of comparison. This statement has in it no power to depress the student who has found a type higher than that measured by his own immediate attainment, but it should have power to weigh the thought which at any time renders the student either self-complacent or, contrariwise, mentally jaded. If comparison were wholly according to the pattern and example of Christ Jesus, progress alone should ensue, but mortals rarely consider how seldom this is true; to desire to be like another person is one of the plagiarisms of the mysterious carnal mentality for ages classified and better understood as "human nature;" as the idealized person is not a spiritual ideal, a comparison made according to some mutable parallel seldom knows when, if ever, its measurement is true.
Discouragement and envy are the by-products of an evil chemistry, distilling their poisons in the thought of the one who resorts to comparison. The discouraged thinker may regard the so-called successful man as one who was never compelled to erase or efface his false opinions, or else made the needed effacement with little pain; whereas no mortal ever has escaped or will escape this chastening necessity. Not always the so-called successful man, but the exemplary man, is any individual who rises above evil in a strength which the carnal mind would call unusual, but which is neither unusual, unnatural, nor yet supernatural.
The envious thinker believes that such worth as he has is not regarded by his fellow men, and not being called upon for the time to exercise it, he suffers his independence to become mesmerized and stultified by tongue-tied indifference. Too often his self-esteemed worth is but a currency of platitudes, disclosing only blatant impulse, whereas the serpent-like wisdom recommended by our Master may be that silence which another oft-quoted authority says is "golden." Did not Moses imply that to "stand still" was synonymous with seeing "the salvation of the Lord"? It should be remembered that discouragement and envy obtain only when mortal man is comparing himself and his work, which is the product of himself, with the usefulness and achievements of other persons, instead of testing the impersonal rule which, to all followers of it, spells happiness or heaven itself. In such act of comparison, the student temporarily alienates himself from the "commonwealth of Israel," and allies himself to the household of Ceasar.
