Seneca tells of a great traveler who was complaining that he was never the better for his travels. "That is very true," said Socrates, "because you traveled with yourself." "Now," asks Seneca, "had not he better have made himself another man, than to transport himself to another place?" A similar thought was expressed by Horace when he pointed out the futility of one who is care ridden trying to escape his troubles by travel, instead of by shaking off the rider, care. The idea of making one's self another man comes near to Paul's "put on the new man." The closeness of the resemblance between Paul's thought and Seneca's depends on the concept which each had of the new man. Paul meant something very definite by "the new man;" he meant, in fact, man in God's image, "the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." The new man is thus the same as the real man, and one's concept of him will necessarily depend on one's concept of God, whom, as Christian Science teaches, the real man exactly resembles. This human need of renewal was no passing thought of Paul's. He adopted the idea, of course, from Christ Jesus, who spoke of the new birth to the rabbi and expressed astonishment that one who was called a master in Israel should not understand such things. Now if a man is born again he will learn all things newly, and this saying of Jesus is only a more emphatic way of putting what, on another occasion, he alluded to as the necessity of each seeker after truth becoming as a little child.
This power of any individual to reject wrong thoughts and so become another man is constantly recognized in the Scriptures, and this fact borne in mind explains passages which would otherwise be obscure. Thus in Psalms we find, "A froward heart shall depart from me: I will not know a wicked person," which clearly means that David was determined not to tolerate or entertain wicked thoughts, and the remainder of the psalm, continuing in the same strain, makes the meaning even clearer. The psalmist was indeed resolving to obey the First Commandment, as we may plainly see from Mrs. Eddy's rendering of this, her favorite text, which she gives us in ''Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 19), where she writes, "Jesus urged the commandment, 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me.' which may be rendered: Thou shalt have no belief of Life as mortal; thou shalt not know evil, for there is one Life,— even God, good."
When Jesus said, "I thank thee, O Father. Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight," he was rejoicing in the simplicity of Truth, rejoicing that Truth is of such a nature that a man to find it, does not need to depend upon that complicated structure which human wisdom calls education, but he needs the simplicity, humility, trustfulness, and freedom from the doctrines and experience of mortal mind, which belong to a little child. Jesus was not rejoicing that Truth was hidden from any individual. Truth is not hidden from any one, but Truth does demand a certain attitude on the part of the seeker. Truth demands that as a step toward vision, one shall cast away reliance on human wisdom, which "is foolishness with God." Jesus, being filled with true wisdom, could see the ugliness of "the wisdom of this world" and its obscuring faculty, and he also discerned the beauty of understanding; he saw what God had made and beheld that it was very good and rejoiced in it. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him," but that which is termed the natural man can be cast off and "he that is spiritual" can be put on in his stead.
