WHEN "the seventy returned again with joy, saying. Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name," Jesus rejoiced with them, and reaffirmed in stronger terms this assertion of power. Yet straightway he added: "Notwithstanding in 'this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven." This warning reveals the Master's apprehension of the propensity of mankind to seek the loaves and fishes rather than the kingdom of heaven, to be satisfied with shadows apart from substance, to overlook Principle because of absorption in phenomena.
To realize man's spiritual dominion with respect to his immediate environment is a great accomplishment and worthy of rejoicing; but this realization is not reached by seeking it because of the material comforts, power, or place it may give us. If we allow these to become the objects of our worship, the dominion passes from us, and it will be regained only as we seek Truth unselfishly and are ready to endure hardship in its service as well as to enjoy the blessings it bestows. The ability to exercise dominion over the spirits, to relieve distress and overcome fear, to restore that which to mortal sense seems lost— is a great thing; but until we learn to rest this power solely upon its divine Principle, and man's God-ordained and God-sustained perfection, we are not ready to rejoice. The disciples had been taught this basic truth, and by it they had healed the sick. The Master approved of their work's and of their rejoicing; but he saw their danger and wisely pointed them back to Principle. He reaffirmed the fact of the eternal harmony of man's being; and bade them rejoice in this, the spiritual cause, rather than in the material evidences of its activity.
The lesson is one that comes home to us all. Often have we likewise rejoiced unwisely in phenomena alone: and later, when called upon to support our claims of dominion, we have belabored opposing sense testimony with all manner of mental missiles, only to find that we were entrenching evil instead of dislodging it. Finally, wearied and spent with vain buffeting, we have retreated to our last line of defense; have ceased to deal with matter and its conditions at all, and have clung to the thought that, though to the apprehension of the senses the universe should disintegrate and all things within human knowing cease, the verities of being would remain unchanged. Man is always spiritual and not material, the perfect expression of divine goodness, of Life and intelligence; a living, conscious being with faculties that lay hold upon the environing spiritual universe, which the material senses have not discerned nor the fleshly mind cognized, and which find it, as God saw it in the beginning, very good. Dwelling in this thought, we have suddenly found the victory, for which we had forgotten to struggle longer, ours: have found physical phenomena altered to reflect, not our will, but the reign of good.
