To Whom Should We Look?

THE great need of humanity is salvation from error, whether manifested in sin, disease, ignorance, fear, grief, poverty, or other discords. Whether one knows it or not, he needs to be saved from a wrong concept of existence, mistaken views of individuality and substance. Those rich in material things need to be saved from the false trust of leaning on material wealth, and from looking to personality instead of relying on the one true God, who is Spirit. Those who are poor in material things need to be saved from their false beliefs about substance and supply, from the belief they are likely to acquire that poverty is real or any part of God’s plan for His children, and from the futile conviction that money and material things will bring them happiness. On page 261 of Science and our Leader bids us look away from the mortal concept “into Truth and Love, the Principle of all happiness, harmony, and immortality.”

Those who are diseased in body need salvation not only from their ills, but probably from the belief that a mere change in physical conditions would produce health and happiness. Those who are troubled in mind need to be saved from their wrong thinking and worries, and also from the belief that a change of conditions in accordance with any outlined program of the human will would bring enduring happiness. The persons who are suffering most are often the ones who are nearest to a correct solution of their problems, even as Jesus declared when he said that the publicans and sinners would go into the kingdom of heaven before the self-righteous religionists who had lulled themselves into a false sense of ease by a willing submission to conventional mesmeric belief.

All human beings need salvation from the belief that harmony can be obtained in any degree from mortal mind. All need to know that there is no permanent salvation without obedience to God’s command as found in Isaiah, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth,” and that there is no Saviour but the spiritual idea of God as manifested by Christ Jesus. Spirit, God, and man in His image and likeness, must be understood and demonstrated according to the plain teachings of the Master.

Jesus taught his students to look to God, and God only, for salvation; and he demonstrated this in every footstep of his earthly career. He often rebuked his disciples and others for looking to his personality for help, and taught them to look above person or any earthly institutions. The Master also said that when men’s hearts fail because of fear, they should look up, and lift up their heads, their highest aspirations, to God. Jesus made it plain that in the midst of tribulations those who look to God for solace find that their “redemption draweth nigh,” the tribulations themselves constituting a sign that “the kingdom of God is nigh at hand.”

Having learned these lessons, Peter afterward administered a rebuke to the wonder-struck citizens of Jerusalem when, after healing the lame man at the gate of the temple, the populace looked on Peter and John as having themselves wrought a miracle. Peter said: “Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? or why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk?” Then he told his auditors that the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob had raised up His ideal in human consciousness, and through the faith taught by Christ Jesus, this “Prince of life,” the lame man had been healed. The apostles had learned to look away from personality to Principle. Their abandonment of self-righteousness, self-will, and self-love enabled them to be the instruments of God’s healing power.

It is a mistake for any Christian Scientist to rely on human opinion, or on what his friends and relatives advise, to shape his course of salvation. In personal or family affairs, in business, in church work, because of the habitual tendencies of the human mind, some may be prone to lean on the opinions of coworkers, rather than to look to divine Principle alone, thus securing revelations of the divine purpose whereby to do their work. In looking to God in Christian Science we have the Bible, the writings of our Leader, including the Church Manual, and many other impersonal helps, as well as the never-ending right of communion with God through prayer. Everything necessary to spiritual progress is provided and the way is always open. We only need to look to God, and His idea as expressed in Christian Science, to be divinely guided in every necessary human action.

We come into Christian Science by a willingness to give up our human will, and by daily praying, as the Church Manual teaches (Art. VIII, Sect. 4), for the expression of the divine will through our willing activity: “‘Thy kingdom come;’ let the reign of divine Truth, Life, and Love be established in me, and rule out of me all sin;, and may Thy Word enrich the affections of all mankind, and govern them!” Should we not demonstrate this by looking to God in all our ways for guidance? Why run from friend to friend to ask them what they think or what we should do? Why not determine, as we surely can, what God thinks and demands, and then follow on to do what infinite wisdom directs? Why should we appeal to friends for their approval and judgment when the first and final arbitrament is always the judgment of God, divine Principle? The Master asked for no homage and feared no condemnation. He always looked to God and did as the Father commanded, leaving every issue in His care. What friend or foe thought never influenced him. Jesus knew that God is Love, the only cause, the only judge; and in obedience he went his patient way through this dreamland of material sense, realizing at length its utter nothingness in spite of human law, opinion, and opposition. Well indeed may all the followers of the Master share the aspirations of Kipling:—

Teach us to look in all our ends
On Thee for Judge, and not our friends;
That we with Thee may look uncowed
By fear or favor of the crowd.

All of us at times are troubled by fear, sickness, and doubt, but we know that Christian Science denies the existence of these errors from the standpoint of the perfection of God and His idea. The scientific denials of a Christian Scientist should bring immediate escape from these errors; but if they cling, one does not look. away from God when asking help of a practitioner of Christian Science, since he knows that the help will come from God and none other. We can do. much for ourselves when in trouble by taking our problems directly to God, declaring the nothingness of sin and disease, and acknowledging His perfection, power, and allness. John wrote, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Why not then continuously look to God, and when necessary confess our sins without one plea of self-righteousness? Honest confession, the willingness to have secret causes of discord uncovered and destroyed, together with the realization that man in divine Science is always free from evil, will do much to destroy the effects of wrong thinking.

In Science and Health (p. 264) Mrs. Eddy answers the question raised in our initial inquiry in these words: “Mortals must look beyond fading, finite forms, if they would gain the true sense of things. Where shall the gaze rest but in the unsearchable realm of Mind? We must look where we would walk, and we must act as possessing all power from Him in whom we have our being.”