Articles

Nearly every day brings news that some record has been broken. Whether it is in the realm of sports, engineering, or scientific technology, the achievement is evidence of mankind's increasing triumph over limitation.

A disturbed child who had known nothing but abuse was taken into a kindlier atmosphere. At first, to the dismay of those who were trying to help him, the child clawed at their faces.

Do we find ourselves overwhelmed by the enormity of some problem? If we're delving deeper and deeper into the morass of sickness or lack, unhappiness or loss, we're likely to get stymied. The solution comes as we stop acting like a limited mortal trying to overcome some trouble from a material basis and begin to act like God's representative.

There is continuing need today for trustworthy defense—against slander, for example, criminal aggression, disease, superstition, occultism. Only absolute Truth provides an unfailing defense.

Picture a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl on summer holidays. She is in deep trouble at school, with her future uncertain.

One of the most joyful challenges before every Christian Scientist is to let divine Truth build in him such a strong defense of spirituality that should Truth's unreal opposite, animal magnetism, tempt him to be drawn to it like iron filings to a magnet, there will be nothing in him to respond to it. As we let Truth reveal itself in our thought and life, all latent and subtle forms of animal magnetism are brought out from under cover where we can clearly detect them and fully reject them as suppositional lies.

When those faithful, sorrowing women—Mary Magdalene, Salome, and the mother of James—went to the sepulcher at dawn, their purpose was to anoint the crucified body of Jesus with spices they had bought. When they entered the rock-hewn tomb, Mark tells us: "They saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted.

I used to think metaphysics was like a staircase. Each demonstration of the truth of God and man would give us more understanding of the Christ; and the higher we climbed, the more certain our ability to heal.

Serving as Reader in a branch Church of Christ, Scientist, or a Christian Science Society is an opportunity for seeing more clearly the activity of God's presence in the lives and affairs of mankind. Service implies readiness: readiness to follow directions, readiness to be inspired, readiness to be of use.

For many years part of my family's affairs have been looked after by a firm who call themselves either lawyers or solicitors according to the part of the English speaking world they are addressing at the moment. One of the early members of this firm, who was a very enlightened Christian and a devout churchman, had a favorite saying: "It's only a hair's breadth which hides the sun from us.