THE influence of Christian Science upon the human understanding is not to glorify material personality, but to efface it, and so bring to light the true concept of man as spiritual and immortal. This does not mean the extinction, but the salvation, of mankind. It means the elimination from human thought of whatever is baneful and unworthy, and the establishment of all that is good and worthy as the whole truth concerning man. Personal testimony declares of man that he is "of the earth, earthy," that out of his heart proceed evil thoughts, that he begins in sin and ends in corruption. According to the Scriptural record, this embodiment of error was condemned at the beginning and throughout its career has only continued to develop more evil. It is not strange, then, that Jesus should say to his disciples, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself;" for except material selfhood is denied, that is, forsaken, spiritual man, the likeness of God, cannot appear, and the mission of Christ is of none effect.

Christian Scientists find special significance in this injunction of the Master, for it substantiates Mrs. Eddy's teaching of the unreal nature of material man and things, and the sole reality of Spirit, God, and the spiritual universe. Of this we may be sure, that if material personality, so called, possessed of itself any God-derived quality, if it existed as a divine fact, or if there inhered in it anything worthy of love or of preservation, Jesus would not have called for its repudiation as the necessity of Christian discipleship; for his mission was to declare, not to deny, the works of the Father.

Because corporeal man is not of the Father, the divine Principle of being, because mortal belief claims the existence of another life and intelligence than God, it should meet with an effective denial from those who accept the Scriptural teaching that "all things were made by him," and that these things are "very good." Evil, posing as a creator, together with its suppositional offspring, should be given the lie in every Christian's consciousness, ‹ as emphatically and finally as when Jesus pronounced it "a liar, and the father of it." There is indeed no other course by which to overcome it, no other way to make Christianity a life instead of a creed.

Christian Science shows plainly that the demand for self-denial exists because the belief of life in matter is not true, and because this false sense of being is all that stands between the individual and Christ. To regard man as a creature of flesh and blood, deriving his existence from what is termed matter, depending upon it for health and happiness, and submitting to its asserted laws, is to be ignorant of man's spiritual sonship with God which Christ Jesus exemplified. The revelation of truth in Christian Science has drawn the line between Spirit and the flesh, between Mind and matter, between what is true and what is not true; and mortals must take refuge on the side of truth to escape the experiences of error. Mortals may attempt to ignore, but they cannot obliterate this line; it is the lesson of the Master's words and works, by whose aid mankind may begin and continue the demonstration of man's spiritual, real selfhood. Because of God's infinite fatherhood, because He alone is the origin of all things real, Jesus bade his followers call no man their father, and thus he rebuked the belief of human origin and personality.

The self-recognition of personal nothingness was declared by the great Teacher to be indispensable to Christian practice, but most religious teachers of later days fail to emphasize this essential of Christianity, or content themselves with the common assumption that it refers only to the refraining from certain indulgences. Mrs. Eddy, with her wonderful spiritual comprehension of the Master's message, and the true significance of his works, has given the scientific interpretation of Jesus' teaching as demanding not only the denial of selfish indulgence, but the denial of the mortal self itself. In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," she has shown how this may be done, how mortals may forsake self for the spiritual idea which the Master taught and demonstrated, how to overcome the seemingly innate evil which would condemn every member of the human family to degradation and woe. The nothingness of this claim of evil, asserting itself in sinning and suffering humanity, has been revealed in Christian Science, and mankind are beginning to take hope, and to work their way up and out of the horrible dream of matter and mortality.

The mistake of Christendom, and the cause of its comparative failure to fulfill its work, has been its admission of the claims of matter, and its consequent submission to its false laws of disease and death. It has accepted as real and powerful the very conditions which Christ Jesus overcame, and taught his followers to overcome, by virtue of the religion he established. It has accepted the unscriptural belief of personal creators, the belief of a personal life and intelligence separate from God, capable of good and evil, sin and suffering, although the whole human race has groaned for ages under the burdens which this same belief has imposed. What a travesty on truth to suppose that the very error from which the Saviour came to redeem mankind can be taken into one's Christianity without nullifying its purpose and intent. Yet is not this what many essay to do, in claiming to be Christians while holding as firmly as before to the belief of reality, power, and perpetuity in evil? Every thinking person must know that the unknowing of error is indispensable to the knowing of truth; and that Christ and Belial, the spiritual and material, are irreconcilably opposed, neither recognizing nor sustaining the other. Then Jesus' motive should also be clear in demanding self-denial of humanity, since not otherwise can mankind apprehend the spiritual idea which transforms human consciousness and brings in the kingdom of heaven, the reign of harmony and spirituality.

The second birth, announced by Christ Jesus as the entrance into God's kingdom, involves the consciousness of a higher basis of life shall matter, for "that which is born of the flesh is flesh," and has no connection with spiritual life. Therefore it naturally follows that the regenerative influence of Christianity cannot be realized while the material theory of life and creation is accepted. In her presentation of Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy has adhered strictly to the teachings of the Master and of his apostles, and demands the absolute denial and abandonment of the claims of materiality in order to compass the full purpose and benefit of Christianity.

The Christian's growth is indicated in spiritual understanding rather than in intellectual beliefs and attainments in dominion over the sensuous nature, rather than in profession and ceremonials; in individual purification, and in "forgetting those things which are behind," the things which have no relation to real being. Christian Science practice is the process wherein human thought, forsaking self, recognizes and reflects, in a degree, the infinite Principle, Love; hence this practice affords no opportunity for selfish ambition, or strife for place or power, for so surely as a student works for personal preferment, he fails to apprehend the meaning of Christian Science, and to that extent is deprived of its true understanding and fruition.

The Christian career is a warfare with the spirit of evil manifest as matter, asserting a kingdom of its own and the ability to create men in the unlikeness of God; namely, as sinful mortals. There is no exception in this warfare. No one becomes a true Christian without striving to overcome the beliefs of the flesh. To avoid this struggle is to remain under the rule of the "carnal mind," with all the iniquitous possibilities implied in that condition. The bane of Christian progress has ever been the belief that Christians need not come out and be separate from materiality in order to follow Christ, for this belief is an agreement with and not a warfare against evil. Notwithstanding that it is impossible to accept, at the same time, a mistake and its corrective truth, popular religious teaching sanctions mortals' acceptance of so-called material laws and conditions, as well as the teachings of the Master, although his teachings are designed to overrule and destroy the claim of material law and power, as witness his own example and that of his apostles. Holding thus to materialism, it is not strange that Christendom lost its healing power, for without his spirituality even Christ Jesus would have been without the power to heal and save mankind.

Nothing but evil can result from unnecessarily temporizing with evil. If one panders in any degree to the sense of anger, envy' malice, etc., he can reap only like conditions therefrom. The asserted selfhood of evil has neither the capacity to receive nor to bestow any good. It can be corrected, and so destroyed. but it cannot rise above its own falsity. Evil is evil, in whatever form or personality it seems to appear, and one's only hope for a better state is to turn from this false self and seek the spiritual reality of man, in which there is no thought or possibility of evil. The carnal nature is depraved to the last degree, and its individualized expression in mortal man is not the type of true manhood, but its opposite. Humanity needs to be saved from this counterfeit through the spiritual idea in Christian Science, even the "new man" which, as St. Paul declares, "is created in righteousness and true holiness." Every mortal has but to look within his own heart to know the necessity of self-denial, and knowing this he should seek earnestly to obey it, until he rises ultimately to the standard of manhood in Christ Jesus.

The worldly-minded Christian, if such a term may be used, may believe Jesus' demand to be impracticable in actual experience, but the Christian Scientist finds it to be not only eminently practicable, but the only effective way by which to realize health and holiness. His concessions to material belief are only by reason of his lack of spiritual understanding, but in his heart he condemns that which for the time he allows. Because the student's understanding of the spiritual truth of being is incomplete, he does not at present fully demonstrate it; but if loyal to what he knows, he will miss no opportunity to put down the material self, with all its false accompaniments, and so rise by degrees to the realization of what man is as the son of God.

St. Paul pricked the bubble of mortal self-esteem when be said, "If a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself;" while Jesus declared the utter absence of good in human personality when he said to the Jews, "I can of mine own self do nothing." Christians must recognize the same truth of themselves before they can truly follow the Master's example. Humility, Mrs. Eddy says, is "the genius of Christian Science. One can never go up, until one has gone down in his own esteem" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 356). No phase of error is more subtle or dangerous than the suggestion of personal goodness or of personal superiority, and the student should guard against this temptation lest he lose his mental poise in listening to the praise of others. If Christ Jesus felt that he could do nothing of himself, it is inexcusable in any of his professed followers to think otherwise of themselves.

Christian Scientists cannot honestly exalt human personality, or consent to its exaltation, since their daily prayer is, or should be, to become like their Master. Can they say with him, that they "receive not honor from men"? Have they "no ambition, affection, nor aim apart from holiness" (Ibid., p. 154)? Do they seek only divine approbation, caring not to achieve human greatness, but only to reflect divine goodness? Then happy are they, and prosperous the cause they serve. Jesus said of his disciples, "They are not of the world," and this can be said of Christian Scientists also if they are departing from material sense, if they are denying the carnal mind and seeking to possess the Mind of Christ, the Mind in which the "prince of this world" could find nothing.

Jesus said again, "Whosoever . . . forsaketh not all that he hath [as a mortal], he cannot be my disciple;" but one is not fulfilling this condition when he struggles for personal advantage, position or power. When individual success inflates vanity, and egotism accepts the honor that is due to God alone, self is not abased but exalted, and the essential requisite of genuine Christian consecration is lacking. The measure of one's Christianity increases only as self-love decreases and the thought of personal somethingness is outgrown. Students will surely miss their way, and be stranded on the shoals of materialism, if the line is not sharply drawn and maintained between Principle and personality. To love human praise for its own sake, or to believe that we are in any way the source of good to others, is the influence of so-called animal magnetism, not of Christian Science and leads to the delusion that this movement depends, in some degree, upon us or our work. God calls the workers who will best do His work, and those best do God's work, and are of the most service to mankind, who exalt themselves least, seeking for the consciousness of good, but not for personal Christian Scientists who adhere to the teachings of their text-book, know that they cannot take the place of divine Principle toward their patients or students; and those who encourage or permit others to lean upon their personality, either for help or guidance, betray their misapprehension of this teaching, else are disloyal to it. God is the only source of good, and even the most successful Christian Scientists should think of themselves as did the Master when the young man sought to worship him, or as did Peter when he said to the Jews concerning the healing of the cripple, "Why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk." Man's part and prerogative is to reflect God. This constitutes his true being. Even though one has been privileged to bear the healing truth of Christian Science to many, and in so doing has laid the foundation for a prosperous branch of the Church of Christ, Scientist, this is no reason for glorifying personality, it should occasion the greater humility; for whatever of wisdom or of goodness one may have manifested in his work is of God, not of himself. The student's work is to know and apply the truth, but personally to stand aside and, in the realization of human helplessness, let the divine perfection appear.

In his "Paradise Lost," Milton describes the downfall of Satan as the result of ambition; he had aspired to the place of the most High, and no longer found a place in heaven. The lesson is applicable to all. The ambition to be a leader of men, to exercise dominion over others, to be thought good and great of one's self, is the same satanic thought, and if allowed to enter the consciousness of Christian Scientists will prove their downfall also, unless detected and destroyed. Evil conditions are never in harmony, for the consciousness of being evil cannot be at peace. So long as the evils that comprise mortal personality are accepted, so long will their consequents of sin, suffering, and death be experienced.

The demand for self-effacement is the demand for pure living, for uprightness, honesty, justice, love, the demand for the ideal spiritual man whom God creates and maintains. All that Christian Scientists can do, all that any one should ever wish to do, is to become conscious of goodness as man's true selfhood; but to do this demands constant self-denial or effacement of that false sense of self which is "enmity to God," and which therefore includes nothing of good. Love of self binds thought to materiality, but as these bonds are loosed through Christian Science, thought rises spontaneously toward the spiritual consciousness of being, the perfect realization of which is the ultimate of Christianity, and should be the goal of every Christian disciple.

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