ONE of the most promising and prophetic things about Christian Science is the fact that it is broadening and deepening the sense of the divine requirements, the realization of what constitutes the privilege and prerogatives of a follower of the Master. Nothing so certainly interdicts spiritual progress as contentment with a superficial concept of things, and especially with regard to God and man, the nature of evil, and the fulness of our possible freedom therefrom.
Every worthy representative of this movement will witness that in some degree he has experienced that great mental awakening pictured by Isaiah in his description of the phenomena attending the Messianic appearing. The Lord will "give thee . . . for a light of the Gentiles; to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison . . . that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he." The promise is that of a great illumination, the dawning of a knowledge of God, and the interpretation of the prophetic vision is found in Jesus' words, "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God." The "earth" of ordinary personal sense was to be transformed by the renewing of the mind, as St. Paul puts it, that deepening of insight, that escape from materiality, that inspiration of love, the "expulsive power of a new spiritual affection" which fulfils the requirement, "Ye must be born again."
When one is thus led to consider the exceeding richness of the believer's assured experience and endowment, he at once perceives the sad shortcoming and sin of much present-day religious sense, its lack of depth and intensity, its habit of aimlessly rambling about among mere creedal statements, instead of apprehending and utilizing the great spiritual truths of the gospel. It must have been this discreditable difference between the true meaning of the revealed Word, which is to be expressed in spiritual understanding and ideal living, and their cheap sense of it, which impelled the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews to administer the scathing rebuke which is recorded in its sixth chapter, a rebuke which is keenly rephrased on many a page of Science and Health and Mrs. Eddy's other writings, and which kindly but effectively uncovers today's pressing need.
