TO many religionists the cross has been a symbol, dark and forbidding, of suffering and loss, of ingratitude, hatred, scorn, and unrequited love. Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, saw beyond the symbol an open doorway to spiritual advancement and recompense. In her Message to The Mother Church for 1902 she writes (p. 19): "The great Master triumphed in furnace fires. Then, Christian Scientists, trust, and trusting, you will find divine Science glorifies the cross and crowns the association with our Saviour in his life of love."
The first step, then, in learning that "Science glorifies the cross," is to trust; and how much this word implies! It means, first of all, that we must not fear the cross. Paul, when he was called by the grace of God, "conferred not with flesh and blood." He clearly discerned that lack of trust, or fear of the cross, could be associated only with the false sense of being, the carnal mind, which claims a selfhood outside God's loving bounty and mercy, and so is separated from the Father's love and care. He realized that we must turn more earnestly to God for guidance; and so he understood the remedy for lack of trust. In his beautiful words to the Corinthians he tells us that "charity . . . seeketh not her own, . . . but rejoiceth in the truth."
The carnal mind's antagonism to Truth is due to the fact that it is outside the Father's house; and in resisting its own destruction, it would seem to oppose the laying down of material sense, that one may walk in the footsteps of the Christ. Paul realized perhaps as clearly as anyone ever could the errors which cause suffering when he said, "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and glamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you."
