THE human mind, so called, has as a rule admired certain traits— physical courage, boldness, personal ambition in competition, power in leadership. But the Bible lays stress, not on these physical characteristics, but on those which mortal mind is apt to call the passive virtues, which, for example, in Abraham were faith, faithfulness, and obedience; in Moses, meekness and spiritual understanding; in Daniel, purity and trust. When, centuries later, Jesus taught, his praise in the Sermon on the Mount was of the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers, and the pure in heart. His disciples, too, whose writings have place in the New Testament, valued the same spiritual qualities. John writes to his readers as to "little children." Peter bids them to add virtue to faith, knowledge to virtue, temperance to knowledge, patience to temperance, godliness to patience, brotherly kindness to godliness, and charity to brotherly kindness, saying that "he that lacketh these things is blind." James states that "the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy." And in our own day, Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, differing not from Jesus and his disciples in her placing of values, says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 4), "What we most need is the prayer of fervent desire for growth in grace, expressed in patience, meekness, love, and good deeds."
Why do all these seekers after Truth, from Abraham to Mary Baker Eddy, unite in placing the highest value on such things as love, meekness, purity, spiritual understanding, which mankind so often values but little, unless it is because they do not consider mankind,—Adam and the Adamic race, whose story begins in the second chapter of Genesis,— but go back to the real man made in God's likeness, whose creation is set down in the first chapter of Genesis? Adam's progeny judges on the basis of material sense, the spiritualized man by spiritual sense; and for that reason their values differ utterly.
Material sense believes that man is material, is endowed with a human will which governs him, and is subject to temperament and disposition; and thus it excuses him for defects or idiosyncrasies of character. This human will is an exacting master, keeping its subject in constant uncertainty and worry, and tending always toward heart-burning, decrepitude, fretfulness, mistake, and failure. It says in the words of Isaiah, "I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High," and thinks that it can accomplish this by its own power. It is this unstable, self-vaunting, and never satisfied socalled mortal mind that Mrs. Eddy, on page 591 of Science and Health, defines in part thus: "Nothing claiming to be something, for Mind is immortal." It is discernible only in belief by so-called material sense, since Spirit takes no cognizance of it.
