Watching Point 205

205 — WATCH lest you spend all your days in striving to improve the old man, believing that he can be made fit to stand in the very presence of God. The purification of mortal mind and body merely represents the sacrifice we are called upon to make, in order that they may be eliminated, and the real man may appear.

Joseph Mann recorded Mrs. Eddy’s words to him as follows (Mary Baker Eddy, A Life Size Portrait, first edition, page 232): “You must get rid of the ‘old man’, the old woman; you cannot make them better and keep them. You are not getting rid of the old man if you try to make him better. If you should succeed in making him better, he would stay with you. If you patch up the old and say it is good enough, you do not put it off, but keep it. If you try to make the old satisfactory, you are preparing to keep it, not to put it off.”

These statements would not sound so revolutionary if Mrs. Eddy had said, “You must get rid of mortal mind; you cannot make it better and keep it, etc.”