And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit. — Joel, 2: 28, 29.
The release which Christian Science brings includes vastly more than escape from conditions of sickness and disease. Its real work, its immediate and permanent mission, is the destruction of sin, — its divine forgiveness. Or, to put it still more specifically, the work of Christian Science is to eliminate from human consciousness everything that is not in the likeness of God. Its appointed task is "to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free." This is a negative designation of its work. Affirmatively, positively, its mission is to bring to light the real man who is God's likeness, and to reveal the infinite resources of good which are his divine endowment. In this higher understanding of man there comes to human thought not only the means of escape from sickness and sin, but release from many a condition of limitation that has fettered his freedom. With the realization that man's origin is in infinite Spirit and not in modes or conditions of matter, there comes a growing sense of freedom from any claims of mortal heredity and environment, and there is revealed the life that never grows old; there is found an intelligence which combines a fine discernment and a virile grasp, and whose buoyant spontaneity and beauty only increase with the unfolding years. A new sense of the Love that never fails, enters consciousness. Here human affection finds a heritage of unfolding freshness and fairness.
This spiritual understanding is the direct importation from God to man which is referred to in the passage from Joel, above quoted. Among the results of this universal baptism will be these: "Your old men shall dream dreams; your young men shall see visions." This, according to accepted human experience, constitutes a paradox. We do not look to the young man for the vision of the seer. This insight comes, it is supposed, to those of ripened experience. who through years of reflection and contemplation have gained the discernment that penetrates the unseen. On the other hand, age is not the period of dreams. This is given to the buoyant fancy of youth, ere poetry and romance have fled and stern experience has "disillusioned" the hopeful dreamer,—the one who believes and trusts to ideals too beautiful and transcendental for mortals to make practicable. But the prophet's assurance is that "old men" shall dream dreams, and "young men" shall see visions.
