Of the multitude of beliefs emanating from a so-called mortal mind, that of grief is one of the most subtle and mesmeric. Throughout the ages it has been looked upon with the greatest pity and solicitude. The individual who is seemingly in deep grief for some supposed sorrow is often the target for numerous sympathetic suggestions from a host of well-meaning but ill-advised friends, who are thus helping to drag the one they would comfort into the depths of despair. Even the student of Christian Science, unless thoroughly awake to the danger, may be deceived by this error. Where one might instantly detect the lie when presenting itself as selfishness, hate, anger, or some other well-known phase of evil, the temptation is to temporize, as it were, when the same lie comes in the form of grief. Mortal mind is appeased, convention adhered to, by adopting the voice and expression of condolence. Thus the door is thrown open, the sentry is off guard, until one wakes up to realize that the belief of grief and that of its seeming cause have both been accepted as realities.
The experience called death is a belief of the evil one or the one evil, which is often the cause of grief in its most excessive form. Of course if death were a reality, the indulgence of grief because of it would be excusable. In order to see the needlessness and unreality of grief, therefore, one must first see the unreality of any seeming cause.
In the final analysis it comes down, as every other discordant condition does also, to the belief in a power opposed to and greater than Principle, because it is apparently able to disturb the harmony of creation. If the Christian Scientist truly sees and spiritually understands what he affirms to be true, namely, that Principle is the one and only power governing the universe, then no seeming condition of mortal mind, whether calling itself death, disaster, or by any other name, can have the slightest power to disturb the harmony of his being. No matter how one may endeavor to excuse one's self, the fact remains that grief for any seeming cause whatsoever is the admission of another and greater power than Principle, and is a direct violation of the First Commandment. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
