OUR Leader. Mary Baker Eddy, has said in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 568), "Self-abnegation, by which we lay down all for Truth, or Christ, in our warfare against error, is a rule in Christian Science." To one uninstructed in this teaching, this rule may seem to require a far greater sacrifice than one is prepared to make. But we are not required to abandon anything of real value, or to give up something connected with our true being. Self-abnegation calls upon us simply to "lay down all for Truth," to abandon the false belief in material selfhood. Within this belief lie all the difficulties which claim to destroy our peace and our health, disarrange normal functions, and bring discord into human affairs.
Self-abnegation involves the giving up of erroneous suppositions, such as we find indicated in Science and Health (91:25-6). How to gain the mastery over false suppositions, that is, lay them down for Christ, and so bring harmony into our lives. Christian Science points out practically and effectively.
The belief in intelligent matter, mind in brain, must go down before the great truth that the infinite God is the only Mind, the only source of intelligence. Erroneous suggestions, springing from the belief of mind in matter—suggestions that we do not know what to do; that we are afflicted with loss of memory or lack of intelligence, that we have not the ability to perform allotted tasks, or that we have a mental weakness of some kind, due to inheritance—are destroyed by the realization that we live, move, and have our being in Him, and that all intelligence and all true knowledge are derived from the all-knowing and ever-available divine Mind. As we affirm the fact that divine intelligence is ever with us, and adequately meets every situation which may confront us; that it guides, sustains, and inspires us with all needed ideas wherever we may be, the Christ wipes out the opposing supposition of lack.
