LONG centuries ago the master Teacher respecting Soul-sense said to the dull and self-satisfied disciples around him, "Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not?" Did he refer to material seeing and hearing? No. He meant that they had the latent ability to discern spiritually, to understand spiritually, and yet they had not brought themselves to the plane of thought where they could do so. Here he recognized their real origin and existence as in Spirit, not in matter, and their consequent endowment of spiritual perception, into which inheritance, however, they had not entered. His disciples, although more alert to the things of Soul than the generality of their countrymen, were still dull and unskilled in spiritual seeing and hearing, and many were their mistakes and failures.
On page 136 of Science and Health our Leader says, "Jesus patiently persisted in teaching and demonstrating the truth of being." The disciples were thus aided in cultivating their spiritual faculties of perception, and through these words and works of Jesus and their own attempts to follow his instructions, these faculties became more active. Especially did they become aware of their need of spiritual sense. At last, after Jesus' resurrection, their errors of thought were so far eliminated that still greater illumination/ the baptism of the Holy Ghost, came upon them. Yet, even then, although, as our Leader tells us, "they no longer measured man by material sense," their "conception of the Life which is God" (Ibid., p. 47) was but faint. Still greater activity and keenness of spiritual sense was needed by them, even as it is assuredly needed by us of the present day.
How can we cultivate this much needed Soul-sense? Instruction therefor has come to the human race during successive ages in a form adapted to the comprehension of the age, and it has always come through some human being who was "not disobedient unto the heavenly vision," as the apostle Paul said of himself. From Abel to Moses, exponents of Soul-sense arose to declare what they perceived, and the work of Moses, who brought with shining face the two tables of testimony from the mount of elevated thought where he had communed with infinite Mind, established a new era in the world. Obedience to the law of Spirit, or as we might say, conformity to the nature of Spirit, was plainly declared to be the road which leads to the perception and realization of spiritual truths. Obedience to the highest perceived at any one stage, leads to a yet higher point of perception.
