IN his beautiful letter to the Philippians, Paul seems to have attained to such an altitude of spiritual vision, inspiration, and love that out of the fullness of his loyal and redeemed affection he can declare: "What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ." And earlier in the epistle he declares, "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." These words were written by him whose life once consisted of persistent and relentless persecution of the Christ, Truth, which after his conversion he came to perceive and love as his very life.
The question arises, Have we caught a vision of the Christ, Truth, sufficiently to understand what it was that arrested Saul on his destructive mission to Damascus; that turned the persecutor into Paul, the patient, loving disciple? Perhaps in our self-complacency and sufficiency we think we are not persecutors. But we need to remember Jesus' words in this connection: "He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." We are therefore "with" the truth only in the proportion that the Spirit or Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus" is also in us.
Now this revelation of Truth which, in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy explains as the Comforter, discloses the great, comforting truth that God is All-in-all. It is the coming of this truth to human consciousness that casts out or rejects error as unreal, and leads us, as Jesus promised it should, "into all truth." But such is the pride, selfishness, laziness, and opacity of the unredeemed human consciousness that after a slight awakening to the demands of the truth, after one has, perhaps, been rendered harmonious by Christian Science, one often settles down complacently and apathetically, satisfied with his modest attainment, instead of meekly and progressively yielding up all things pertaining to material self and sense to the pure Christ, Truth.
