ON page 22 of "Retrospection and Introspection" Mrs. Eddy writes: "God is over all. He alone is our origin, aim, and being." Since this triad of true origin, aim, and being is interrelated, it must be claimed in its entirety by every Christian Scientist. Without a true sense of origin we cannot feel the nobility of true aims indicated by the Master's words, "Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee." It would be a hard task, for instance, to accede to the belief in a material origin and yet coax ourselves into thinking that we prefer spiritual aims to material ones. Such basic inconsistency must needlessly prolong our struggle to emerge into the demonstration of real being. We should therefore constantly dwell on the fact that the consciousness of spiritual man proceeds from pure Mind. In the degree in which this fact is realized and demonstrated by the individual, temptations lose their hold and fear fades out of human thought.
Christian Science is sanctifying the daily life of its students. They know that all the honest effort and the holy energy they manifest has been divinely awakened in them and is sure to be rewarded by the God of justice and mercy. True thoughts and aims, and the many lovable qualities known to humanity, originate not in flesh and blood, but in God, Spirit. "To live so as to keep human consciousness in constant relation with the divine, the spiritual, and the eternal, is to individualize infinite power; and this is Christian Science" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 160). This, then, is the aim of the Christian Scientist, and it is attained through claiming the true origin of man and the integrity of spiritual identity.
Like the Master, the Christian Scientist is aware of temptation; but this awareness compels him to rise above it, and not descend into it. Carnal desires and fears are the witless tyrants of the so-called carnal mind; they are aimless nonentities, to which none need subject himself, either voluntarily or involuntarily.
The Christian Scientist's purpose and possibility is to prove the practical power of ideality over materiality. He faces and dominates mortal beliefs through the authority and purity of spiritual ideas, and these ideas lift him above the oppressive beliefs in sickness, and other baffling problems of human existence.
On page 348 of "Miscellaneous Writings" Mrs. Eddy states: "The Scientists aim highest. They press forward towards the mark of a high calling." The suggestion may come to one that he is aiming too high, and should be content with lesser standards of thought and conduct. Material sense, the sense of matter, pleads for concessions, for temporizing; but these invalid, lowering claims of material sense are checkmated by the valid, elevating claims of spiritual sense.
The wise Christian Scientist does not go beyond the measure of his present understanding with regard to the normal care of the body; but in the purification and beautification of human character one cannot aim too high, and in this respect some may not be aiming high enough. One must look to God as the only cause in order to bring out the perfection of effect. Everything that God imparts is intelligent, purposeful, substantial; and all error is therefore purposeless, expressionless, and substanceless. Then, shall not our aim be to prove this twofold fact?
Spiritual progress is allied to cloudless happiness here and now. Who does not yearn to awaken in the likeness of the new man, the beloved of Love? He must want it sincerely and effectively, and must invoke the divine energy in order that he may shake off the slumberous sense that at present he is mainly, if not altogether, material. By what means shall we realize spiritual whole-heartedness? By here and now claiming the triad of spiritual origin, aim, and being; by thinking of ourselves not as mortal, but as man, as God's likeness at every point, every moment. This makes demands upon us, and promises reward; whereas the mistaken admission that we are mortal makes no demands and deprives us of reward. The Christian Scientist, therefore, vehemently insists that here and now he can reflect enough of Spirit and spiritual joy to put off all self-pity, sorrow, selfishness, fear, and press on undeterred toward "the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Here and now the Christian Scientist is ceasing to write his name in the dust and is finding his identity in Mind, not matter.
Holiness includes health. If our holy aims seem unattainable, and health beyond our reach, we have but to seek in pure Mind the renewal and strengthening of our highest desires. Then our vision will prove equal to each task. Every upspringing hope is born of God and leads to the realization of our spiritual identity. The Christian Scientist's daily life and outlook is therefore never aimless: it is divinely aimful.
"As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man." The heart of spiritual man is the mirror of infinite Love, and is eternally permeated with loving-kindness. There is no absence of Love or its reflection, and the suggestion that either is absent is nothing but a lie. Christian Scientists do not affirm lies; they deny them.
Every working Christian Scientist constantly witnesses the release and restoration of erstwhile sin-bound or pain-racked pilgrims of earth, through the ministry of Christian Science. He is alive to the fact that universal salvation can be compassed only by individual demonstration, and to this end he constantly reminds himself of Mrs. Eddy's forceful statement (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 241), "One's aim, a point beyond faith, should be to find the footsteps of Truth, the way to health and holiness."
