With most of us our days as little children with our human fathers and mothers still remain in our hearts—a grateful memory. We recall how they cared for us in our infancy, guided and shaped our character as we grew, and stood by us during the storm and stress of our later years. We must have tried their patience many, many times, but our peculiar modes of reasoning were always met with that quiet understanding which was ever ready to make allowances for the almost unbelievable conceits of youth.
Some who read these lines may never have known the love of a mother or a father, or even the joy of a happy home. If so, they more than all others need to be told that they will find in Christian Science a Mother more loving, more tender, than even the best of human mothers, and a Father who is always saying (Luke 15:31), "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine." Keeping an abiding sense of man's unbroken and unbreakable relationship with God, even in the darkest hour of our lives, when the fiercest elements of earth may seem let loose to destroy us, we can turn to our Father-Mother God and find ourselves in our real home—divine consciousness—enfolded in Love, which "never faileth."
Christian Science teaches that man, the son of God, being spiritual and not material, can never express, possess, or experience anything unlike Spirit, the source of his being. No phantoms of fear, pain, sorrow, sin, or limitation of any kind can reach man, because he is "hid with Christ in God." He dwells in a realm where all is well, because all that really exists is God-made, God-bestowed, and God-directed. The only power in this spiritual universe is the power of divine Love. Thus there is no so-called wicked mind to send forth its fallacious arguments that evil is real, is here, is happening, has happened, or is about to happen. Evil is materially mental darkness, but just as there is not enough physical darkness in all the world to put out the light of a single candle, so the totality of evil cannot extinguish a single good thought.
Someone may say: "I know that all this is true. I am a Christian Scientist, and I accept its truths, but somehow I cannot seem to prove them. For years now I have been struggling along under a burden almost greater than I can bear. If God is good and all-power, why does He not answer my prayer for release? I think I have been carrying the cross long enough." And perhaps he goes on to explain that this cross was laid on his shoulders years ago through no fault of his own. Because someone else made a mistake, it is now his to carry. He feels that the burden is utterly unfair, unjust, and cruel, but how to get rid of it he does not know.
So long as one seeks to get rid of what he calls a cross he will never lose it. That rather unlovely expression shows that his own mental attitude toward it is wrong. Many a troubled heart has found an entirely different viewpoint in the comforting words of one who knew by experience better than anyone since the time of Christ Jesus how rugged is the path which mortals are sometimes called upon to tread. Mary Baker Eddy writes in her book "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 574), "The very circumstance, which your suffering sense deems wrathful and afflictive, Love can make an angel entertained unawares."
To hate the cross, to grumble over it, or to feel sorry for oneself because of it is not to lose it. The Christian Science way is the way of love, not hate, and everything which is not love is not far from hate. To dislike a person is not to love him. To avoid him is not to love him. To ignore him is not to love him. Even to be indifferent to him is not to love him.
A very new student of Christian Science once complained to a practitioner that against her own wishes and better judgment her husband had bought a home in an undesirable neighborhood. She said that the people were ignorant, critical, suspicious, faultfinding, and unpleasant in every way, and that she knew they all hated her.
"All of them?" asked the practitioner.
"Yes, every single one."
"And how much do you love them?"
The patient hesitated. "Well, of course I don't really hate them, if that is what you mean. I don't wish them any harm. All I ask is to be let alone. I mind my own business. When I come home I just shut my door and lock it and get out my Bible."
Poor troubled one! When more of God's love was pointed out to her, she saw that what she had been regarding as a burden was really a blessing in disguise, giving her an excellent opportunity to express more of the Christ-spirit, which is always present, always available, and always sufficient to heal every human difficulty. Many a so-called cross has been known to disappear under the steady warmth of that love which is the reflection of Love itself, poured out joyously in ever-increasing abundance.
After all, crosses are only crosses so called. Calling them crosses does not make them so. Calling the earth flat did not make it flat. When rightly viewed, one may find that what he has been accepting as a calamity, a handicap, a weight pulling him down, can prove to be a steppingstone which will lift him to hitherto undreamed-of heights of spiritual vision. God's plan for all of us is that we shall progress, live, love, work, and be happy. Each year should be more gloriously satisfying than the one before. If it is not, something is wrong, and it behooves us without delay to look within, because no one but ourself can rob us of our joy.
We can refuse to be martyrs. Lack of moral courage has often been responsible for the continuation of some of the most deeply deplorable situations on earth. Let us do what we may always have been afraid to do. If it is right and done in a spirit of love and from Christian motives, God will bless it and be with us all the way. So we need have no fear. A right step courageously taken under such circumstances must result in manifold blessings for everyone concerned. The Bible tells us that when Paul and Silas, bound and in prison, sang songs at midnight and praised God, not only did the prison doors open and let them go free, but at the same time "every one's bands were loosed."
One who earnestly ponders these things will begin to understand more clearly the true import of our Leader's inspired words (Poems, p. 12):
"Then His unveiled, sweet mercies show
Life's burdens light.
I kiss the cross, and wake to know
A world more bright."
In ancient times the cross was associated with punishment and disgrace, with a felon's ignominious end, but it is not so to the Christian Scientist. To him it stands as a symbol of his Father's tender care, teaching him lessons which he has great need to learn, lessons in patience, humility, forgiveness, and unselfed love. He gives it in his heart the gentle and reverent kiss of gratitude, because he has come to see its true meaning. God's "sweet mercies" are sometimes so hidden from mortals by the mist of their own mistaken thinking that they are not always clearly recognized in their true light. They must be "unveiled," as Mrs. Eddy so beautifully puts it, if one would see the promised "world more bright."
Should we then ever pray just to "get rid" of what is bringing us each day nearer to the kingdom of heaven, purified and glorified? How shall we regard the problem which for so long in our blindness we have been calling a cross? Shall it be a blessing or a burden? Shall we keep on dragging it along with us wherever we go, feeling very sorry for ourselves? Or shall we tread the onward path with light and joyous footsteps, becoming more and more conscious of the truth that in God's plan there is neither cross nor burden for His son, and knowing that before us lies the blessing which Love provides for us, a blessing so fair, so sweet, so unutterably precious, that all sad echoes of the past are quickly forgotten before this new proof of our Father's care? How wonderful to find that all the time we were being gently led by the hand of divine Love, not buffeted and beaten by "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," as we had supposed!
Centuries ago, one who did not understand that divine Love was leading him had been wrestling all night with his own wrong sense of a situation. With the dawn, however, an angel—a message from God—came to Jacob of old, and in this clearer light he caught a glimpse of the meaning of his struggle. It is no wonder, then, that when the angel finally said (Gen. 32:26), "Let me go, for the day breaketh," Jacob's reply was, "I will not let thee go, except thou bless me."
"Except thou bless me." Anyone who seems to be traveling a dark path just now will do well to ponder this account. If he feels that he is ready to say truly and from the very depths of his heart, "Dear Father, I do not want this experience to be over until it has blessed me," he may be sure that the blessing is already at hand.
When the best man who ever lived carried his cross up Calvary's hill, he did not ask to be released. It was put upon his shoulders through no fault of his own. The situation was utterly unfair, wrong, and cruel, but he uttered no complaint. He could have laid the burden down. He could have called upon his Father's twelve legions of angels to deliver him, but he was silent. Our beloved Master, Christ Jesus, knew that unless he bore this cross with hope and fortitude, there would be no blessing, no resurrection morning either for himself or for the world.
