HOW many of us as Christian Scientists are really willing to have in our experience only what God supplies, to put away from us whatever does not come from Him? A seemingly endless accumulation of sins and fears and mistakes, of ambitions and vanities and animosities, of failures and losses and ill-gotten gains, of habits, of untrue ways of spending time, and of unrighteous direction of both thought and effort, —all this would fall from us could we accept just what God puts into our lives and refuse to let anything else enter. This would be heaven, man governed by divine Mind and by none other; a world saved and righted according to the rules of Christian living.
This possibility is surely not too Utopian or too celestial. Scriptural teaching urges it; Christian Science rightly applied demonstrates it. Then where is the excuse for the professing follower of Christianity if he lingers with those things in his life which he knows are not derived from God? There is none. This is by no means claiming that either Christians or Christian Scientists are today perfect or can become at once entirely flawless in thought or conduct. To be wholly spiritual is to exalt thought so completely that all evil is unknown; and this is the goal, while today's footstep is only toward the goal.
The standard of accepting only what God sends to us must, however, be clear cut, cleanly desired, and persistently cherished, if we are to move mentally upward. And here Christian Science lifts the mystery from salvation, inasmuch as through its teaching we learn that thought bases all experience; that as thought is spiritually instructed it discriminates between what God gives and what He does not give, and choosing the former, corrects experience; and that in thought, therefore, whether it be individual or collective in its reach, is determined all that befalls us. So it remains that the reflection of divine Mind in human thought-processes means the Mind of Christ entering human affairs, and in no other way than this, whether it be slow or fast, can experience be redeemed.
