“Self-love is more opaque than a solid body. In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error, – self-will, self-justification, and self-love, – which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death” (Citation 4 – S & H, p. 242:15-20).
“Sin” – Greek “hamartia” – Strong’s #266 = To miss the mark; to err, be mistaken; to miss or wander from the path of uprightness and honour; to do or go wrong; to wander from the law of God, violate God’s law in thought or in act; guilt, failure (in an ethical sense), fault.
Mary Baker Eddy to Joshua Bailey in 1888: “Look your heart over every day and see if it is right in the sight of divine Truth and Love, and if one single sin or seed of human self and dishonesty be there, wrestle all day, all night, until the light comes and the victory is won” (Mary Baker Eddy Library, L10705).
The above brings to mind Jacob’s wrestling with error (“a mortal sense of life, substance, and intelligence as existent in matter with its false pleasures and pains” – S & H, p. 308) – “And he said, let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me” (Gen. 32:26).
Our Pastor – the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, along with all of Mrs. Eddy’s writings, are the ultimate and complete HOW TO manuals to instruct us as to exactly HOW TO be victorious over sin – page after page, sentence after sentence, chapter after chapter, and verse after verse. We lack for nothing in this wrestling with error/sin/human self. The tools are ours, we have but to use them as instructed and guided by Mind.
Dissolve* – To melt, liquefy; to break, separate, loose the ties or bonds of any thing, destroy a connected system; To break up, cause to separate, put an end to; To clear, solve, remove, dissipate; To loosen, relax; To cause to vanish or perish; To annul, rescind.
Solvent* – A fluid that dissolves any substance – i.e. water dissolves salt and sugar
Adamant* – A very hard or impenetrable stone; a name given to . . . substances of extreme hardness.
* – All definitions from Webster’s 1828 Dictionary