Confronting sensuality

 A Christian Science practitioner does not give advice. This is illustrated, for me, by the report by Calvin C. Hill in this month's book, We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Volume 1, Expanded Edition. Hill was in Mrs. Eddy’s presence quite a lot, performing tasks for her like searching for students who were worthy of being called to work in her home. At one time she asked if he had any questions for her. He didn’t seek her advice, but asked her to point out something in Science and Health that he could work with. He said, “I wish you would point me to some place in your book that will enable me to overcome the thought of lust and sensuality” (WKMBE p. 338). And Mrs. Eddy replied, he said, most emphatically, “I will!” (ibid).

Mrs. Eddy talked for some time in a most uplifting manner. The effect was that Mr. Hill found he was "a different man" who felt that he could say of himself that he had "experience[d] a measure of spiritual 'new birth' on that wonderful day. However [he goes on to say] later I had to learn that being lifted up by another, even by our Leader, is not working out one’s own salvation – which is to say that there is no vicarious atonement. I saw that I had to work my own way up the hill of Science, that I had to prove in my own experience the truth she had affirmed to me – I had to work it out in demonstration” (pp. 339-340).

The heading of this part of the chapter is “Confronting sensuality,” and it goes on from page 338 to 340 with this so valuable a teaching on that confronting subject. I am reminded that the word “sensuality” is used in the Glossary of Science and Health five times. And it and other derivatives of have about three-quarters of a column in the Concordance to Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures. Mr. Hill does not mention any of them in his account. Surely, we can profit by finding out for ourselves what Mrs. Eddy’s book has to say on the matter.

Joyce Voysey