Articles

" My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" cried the writer of the twenty-second Psalm in words which have gained great significance to many Christians because of their utterance by the Saviour when on the cross of Calvary. The poignant prayer of the singer of Israel emerges later in the same Psalm with accents of spiritual triumph and praise.

In our times a spiritually-minded woman, Mary Baker Eddy, was guided by God to present to the world Christian Science, the promised Comforter. She gave it in a form which can be readily understood and utilized.

We hear a great deal today about civil defense and the careful thought that is being given to ways and means by which men may protect themselves and others from the destructive forces of materialism which have been unleashed by human knowledge and invention. While it is undoubtedly right that governments should seek means to safeguard their peoples from such dangers, there is only one way by which the individual can be guaranteed absolute protection and safety, and that is by his seeking refuge in the sanctuary of Spirit, God.

To become increasingly conscious of the harmony and dominion of true being is the rightful aim of every earnest student of Christian Science, and probably no Biblical statement more fitly gives the key to such spiritual experience than that of the Psalmist ( Ps. 46: 10 ), "Be still, and know that I am God.

One Christmas morning some years ago, when I was pondering the significance of Christmas, I was struck by the following passage in an article entitled "The New Birth," to be found in "Miscellaneous Writings" by Mary Baker Eddy ( p. 18 ): "Thou shalt recognize thyself as God's spiritual child only, and the true man and true woman, the all-harmonious 'male and female,' as of spiritual origin, God's reflection,—thus as children of one common Parent,—wherein and whereby Father, Mother, and child are the divine Principle and divine idea, even the divine 'Us'—one in good, and good in One.

What a joy it is to cease the self-torture of hating our seeming enemies! Mary Baker Eddy says (Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 210, 211 ), "Love your enemies, or you will not lose them; and if you love them, you will help to reform them.

Obedience is a spiritual quality of man. It is the divine response of God's idea to the demands of Life and Love.

Jesus challenged the make-believe of the scribes and Pharisees; he tried to break down the barriers between Gentile and Jew at a moment when the Jews were hoping for a national revival in their challenge to the Roman Empire. The Master urged men to work out their own salvation, to learn to think for themselves instead of being mental salves to despotism, whether civil or ecclesiastical; and he demonstrated the allness of God and the nothingness of matter.

Everyone is concerned more or less with the position in which he finds himself. Men and nations alike seek to improve their present status.

Neither materia medica, chemistry, physics, nor any of the other so-called natural sciences, however useful to mankind they may be, can ever unfold the spiritual facts of body. All human theories ultimately fail, because they incorporate within their premises the basic error that God, Spirit, is not All—that matter, the supposititious opposite of Spirit, is real and substantial.