IT is narrated in the sixteenth chapter of Acts that Paul and Silas, while tarrying at Philippi, were committed to prison charged with disturbing the peace. We also read that as an extra precaution against their escape the jailer thrust them into the inner prison and made their feet fast in the stocks. The story goes on to relate how at midnight, while in this predicament, they prayed and sang praises to God; when "suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one's bands were loosed." So overawed were the magistrates and people by this demonstration, that Paul and Silas were released and entreated to depart out of the city. In the description of these occurrences many points of practical interest to Christian Scientists today are brought out.
In the first place, instead of being dismayed by the apparent hopelessness of the situation in which they found themselves, or consulting material indications in order to devise some means of escape, these spiritually-minded apostles devoted themselves to prayer and praise; and it was while they were in this attitude that deliverance came in an unusual manner entirely apart from any personally conducted scheming or contriving on their part. They were manifestly so absorbed in spiritual ends as to be oblivious of the discomforts of their material environment. Their supreme concern was to be right in their relation toward God; and, as subsequent developments proved, this very letting go of material dependencies opened the way for a demonstration of divine power which affected not only themselves but all who were in touch with them. It is as true today as in apostolic times that, in proportion as one rises above personal considerations to the impersonal sense of good, and comes into direct and conscious relation with the spiritual law through which good is unfolded, the way is cleared for the accomplishment of results which human short-sightedness cannot anticipate.
Had Paul and Silas fixed their attention on their material environment, they would undoubtedly have been so convinced of the futility of trying to escape that their thought could not have reached the settled conviction that divine Principle is the source of all good. But they did not wait until material conditions seemed to turn in their favor before giving expression to their thankfulness. They forgot their apparent plight in rejoicing in the consciousness of spiritual blessings. Their recognition of the immediate presence of good, even under such seemingly trying circumstances, awakened a sense of gratitude which found vent in prayer and praise. The matter of escape from the prison became a purely secondary consideration, and as a result of setting themselves right toward God, the way opened not alone for their own release, but for the emancipation of the jailer and his household from a false sense of existence. This typical experience illustrates the fact that the demonstration of Christian Science is not, in the first instance, a question of doing some specific thing to benefit either one's self or another, but of acquiring an attitude which shall enable one to be the means of bringing the operation of divine Principle into evidence in an impersonal way in our own and others' lives. The electric light shines not because of any illuminating power of its own, but because it is connected with the current which produces light; while the candle, being dependent on its own resources, soon flickers out.
