"Footsteps of progress and spiritualization greet us on every hand." ... The human mind acts more powerfully to offset the discords of matter (the ills of flesh) in proportion as it puts less weight into the material scale and against Spirit—against its own interests. ... As the crude footprints of the past lose themselves in the dissolving paths of the present, we should understand the Science that governs those results, and plant our footsteps on firmer ground."S.&H. 40th ed., pp. 91, 92.
In these lines are found a summary history of the progress of humanity; the key to all its apparently chaotic, irregular movements, and the rule by which to govern our own attitude of thought.
Scientists rejoice in all movements that are in the direction of spiritualization of thought; the great upheavals that fill others with forebodings they regard with calmness, because the law that governs them is revealed in Science. We are in the world (of sense) but not of it. The Scientist lives in the stratum of thought in which are the causes of the general fermentation. He knows that it is produced by the higher demonstrations of Spirit now being brought out; by the denial and reversal in human consciousness of the testimonies of the senses. The Scientist rejoices to hear the name of Jesus the Christ invoked as the watchword of social movements, though it be done blindly, and with a looking to personality more than to Principle. The cry for justice and brotherhood that stirs the rude masses of humanity is a note in the divine Harmony, but the Scientist discerns the harmony free from those jarring elements of the senses that are what is most apparent and real to those who are in the movement.
