Renewal

“I am living only one day at a time, and throwing off the old man of error each day with the word of Truth,” writes a fellow traveler in Christian Science. From this statement one catches an inspiring echo of the fact that whatever is old and erroneous may be cast off, discarded like a worthless garment, by right thinking and acting. Error, that ancient belief in the reality and power of evil, is seen in the light of Christian Science to be the only thing that is old, and it is indeed broken, helpless, and decrepit. Error is old and dying. Its days are numbered, but Truth is forever new and regenerative.

It is a misuse of words to say that man is old, after it is learned in Science that he is the reflection of Mind, “neither young nor old” (Science and Health, p. 244). This law of renewal is always operative. It is the law of Life, whose continuous activity is indicated in the returning spring, and it is no less applicable to man than to the earth upon which he lives. “Thou renewest the face of the earth,” is the psalmist’s statement of this law; and Isaiah significantly says, “Let the people renew their strength;” also, “They that wait upon the Lord [this unfailing law of regeneration] shall renew their strength.” David wisely prayed, “Renew a right spirit within me,” and St. Paul more than once refers to the transformation of the body by the renewal of the mind, showing that the operation of this law is carried out through a mental process.

Regeneration or renewal follows the acceptance and activity of Truth in human consciousness. Weakness gives place to strength, sickness to health, and sin to righteousness, as false beliefs, traditions, and superstitions are replaced by the truth, and we spring up from their hold like a young tree that has unbound. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” Science and Health says (p. 222), “Truth regenerates this fleshly mind and feeds thought with the bread of Life.”

A happy application of the word “old” is seen in the frontispiece of one of the current magazines. It is called “Old Age and Youth.” Here is pictured the base of a grand old forest tree, and close to its rugged side stands a little girl five or six years old, holding her baby Teddy bear in her arms. The tree, a veritable monarch of the woodland, is every inch a king, and the word “old” simply indicates majestic strength, nobility, endurance, patience, rugged grandeur, vitality, victory. It recalls Mrs. Eddy’s lines to “The Oak on the Mountain’s Summit” (Poems, p. 20), which express a similar beautiful thought and comparison:—

Faithful and patient be my life as thine;
As strong to wrestle with the storms of time;
As deeply rooted in a soil of love;
As grandly rising to the heavens above.

As we become aware of the fact that man is wholly mental and not physical, immortal and not mortal, the present use of the word “old” will be obsolete; for when things divine are continually in our thought, governing all our habits and actions, we shall rejoice in a continuing life which is not subject to decay and dissolution. Then shall it be said in the words of Isaiah, of one governed by this law of renewal, “Thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.”