The Transplanting of the Affections

Who in all the world has been satisfied with the fruitage of his affections? Who has not longed both to give and receive deeper, truer, more faithful loving-kindness? And yet rarely has it occurred to men to consider the wisdom or the necessity of transplanting their affections. They have not discerned that all that is unsatisfying and unfortunate in the affections and their blossoming has been because they have been wrongly planted; they have so frequently been growing in ground that is arid, unwholesome, and unproductive of real good. Paul said, “Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth;” but because men have understood neither what this meant nor how to obey it, they have looked upon it as “an hard saying.”

Our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, explains both the difficulty and the remedy, when she writes in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” (pp. 265, 266), “The pains of sense are salutary, if they wrench away false pleasurable beliefs and transplant the affections from sense to Soul, where the creations of God are good, ‘rejoicing the heart.’ ” In this statement she indicates very plainly that so long as the affections are grounded in material sense,—human belief, personal inclination,—only final suffering can result, since “false pleasurable beliefs” are the only outcome from such soil. Let the affections, however, be transplanted “from sense to Soul” and everything changes, since in Soul they must inevitably blossom into that understanding of the good creations of God which always rejoice the heart.

Now the students of Christian Science do not always awaken as fully or whole-heartedly as they might to the need of this transplanting process. They still seem to imagine they can go on with affections divided between matter and Spirit; they still appear to think they may unite satisfactorily such opposites as things material and things spiritual. Possibly the most prominent reason for this is the mistaken belief that if they plant their affections completely in Soul they will do so at the sacrifice of something that is desirable and good. So-called mortal mind is slow to admit that all real good belongs to God, that in Him is to be found all that is truly desirable, and that in giving Him the entire heart everything is gained and nothing can possibly be lost.

Jesus emphasized this same point when he said, “Whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s the same shall save it.” And yet how frequently we find many who are unwilling to deny the mortal sense of things; who are unwilling to look entirely to Soul for all good, lest thereby they may be called upon to relinquish something they call desirable. As, however, the students of Christian Science awaken to the glorious nature of God, good, they will find that every yielding of any belief in matter, even a slight willingness to look to Spirit to find good, will begin to open up to them the very gates of heaven itself. Do these gates still seem closed? Then one may always know it is because mortal mind is arguing for some opposite sense of desirability; for the clinging in some way to the false material sense of things.

Jesus’ statement was, however, unequivocal: If one seek to save his life he shall lose it; but if he will only let go of the false material belief about life and accept the abundant sense of spiritual life which Jesus came to reveal, then he shall surely save it. Our Leader makes this point also very clear in “Retrospection and Introspection,” where she writes on page 32, “Early had I learned that whatever is loved materially, as mere corporeal personality, is eventually lost;” and then she quotes from the Master, “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it.”

Now this teaching of our Master and our Leader is no reason for fear or dismay. Quite on the contrary, it is the open path out of even any seeming loss. When we as Christian Scientists are ready and willing to transplant our affections from matter to Spirit, when we are prepared to say to the human belief, There is nothing desirable outside of God, infinite Soul, Spirit, the All-good, therefore we must find therein all that is dear and lovely if we are to keep it eternally,—then we have begun to lay the ax at the root of all belief in loss of every name or nature. Thus to “transplant the affections from sense to Soul” is to realize the truth of Mrs. Eddy’s statement in “The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany” (p. 131), “Beloved, that which purifies the affections also strengthens them, removes fear, subdues sin, and endues with divine power.”