AS the result of many years' experience, Mrs. Eddy tells us that "the literal rendering of the Scriptures makes them nothing valuable, but often is the foundation of unbelief and hopelessness" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 169). This statement of our revered Leader is borne out by the testimonies of many who have awakened to the spiritual sense of Life and the spiritual meaning' of the Scriptures through her teachings. In many instances the healing of otherwise hopeless disease through Christian Science comes in the very face of the patient's prejudice, and this is followed in most cases by the opening up of the Bible with its priceless treasures of spiritual lore. It often happens that an erstwhile doubter or atheist who has been thus healed, literally lives in the Bible, as illumined by the teachings of Christian Science, no longer bringing to its study a critical or opposing thought, but instead that hunger and thirst for righteousness which Christ Jesus said should be satisfied.
As understanding unfolds, passage after passage of Scripture, once obscure, is seen to be demonstrably true, so that even those which apparently tell of the anger of the Almighty are understood in the light of divine Science to declare the destruction of error and the liberation of those who are in bondage to the belief that evil has power over God's children. The key of spiritual interpretation is especially needed in the study of the book of Revelation by St. John. Many of the chapters present in startling terms and with vivid pictures what is termed the wrath of God and also the wrath of the Lamb. This is explained in Science and Health, where we read that "the manifestations of evil, which counterfeit divine justice, are called in the Scriptures, 'the anger of the Lord.' In reality, they show the self-destruction of error or matter and point to matter's opposite, the strength and permanency of Spirit" (p. 293). If one who is oppressed by a belief that evil has power, either as disease or sin, could discern the might and majesty of Truth, operating through spiritual law, he would begin to realize that overcoming of evil which is never uncertain in divine Science.
In the fifteenth chapter of Revelation we find a wonderful presentation of the final victory over evil as it begins in individual experience. The "seven last plagues" are foreshadowed, but even concerning these we have the assurance of Christian Science that "the sum total of human misery, . . . has full compensation in the law of Love" (Science and Health, p. 574). Those who love righteousness and hate iniquity at length get the victory over the beast and over his image, and stand on the "sea of glass mingled with fire." No longer do they shrink from the fiery baptism which for them has consumed the last vestige of error, for the mortal, animal senses have no more dominion over them. We read that "they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb," celebrating the triumph of the moral law in its higher signification, wherein justice and love are seen as one, and Soul is victorious over sense.
