THE writer in the flush of youthful enthusiasm once said, "I would gladly give the next twenty years of my life if I could at once be at that spiritual point of growth which I hope the next twenty years will unfold in me." But once spoken she knew that there was something fundamentally wrong with her statement beyond the obvious impossibility of skipping over twenty years and the falsity that virtue and grace would necessarily increase with the passage of years. She frequently pondered the statement to discover what the underlying errors of thought were, for she saw that its only value lay in the sincere desire for and love of spiritual good. But it became increasingly apparent that mental laziness must be overcome and a more vigorous and positive attitude adopted regarding herself. Her true being was now at one with God, now spiritual, complete, and perfect, not needing to undergo multifarious phases of growth into maturity. She realized that at any stage of growth in spiritual character or understanding one had to repudiate the aggressive suggestions of a mind apart from God, an existence separate from Spirit, Love, Principle, and to maintain the truth of harmonious, immortal being. She remembered the line of one of Mary Baker Eddy's best loved hymns (Poems, p. 4), "O Life divine, that owns each waiting hour," and knew that each moment was filled with all the love and power of God, hence with the fruitage of good.
Later, when watching the calendar, day by day, for an anticipated date which seemed to arrive too slowly, and which she thought would conclude a difficult period, she was startled into wakening as from a dream, by the angelic rebuke, "Not time—but Life now!" Joyously she dropped all thought of the time involved, even of tribulation, in the glow of realization that she was now, in her true being, enjoying eternal, harmonious, progressive Life. Every moment held the opportunity to express more of the beauty, concord, and activity of ever-unfolding Love, substance, and intelligence. Had not the Bible promised that "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord"? And she added, "Nor can anything separate us from the life of God now, or from our present consciousness of that life."
Subsequent experience has unfolded the same comforting truth in many ways. Daily, even hourly, the necessity is to unself thought, to remove thought from the body, from the pleasures, pains, and cares of personal sense, which would so fix our mental gaze upon the discordant and material that we feel incapable even of considering unselfish interests such as church work and helping others. But it is in just such service that true happiness, freedom, and healing are found.
