Who does not love the coming of spring, as under the glow of light the barren wastes are transformed into loveliness and all the sunlit earth stirs from its somnolence to break forth into bud and blossom? To the thoughtful Christian Scientist it bespeaks that other awakening, when the light of Truth penetrates mortal error and in some hitherto unillumined consciousness there begins that spiritual unfoldment whose flower and fruitage shall go on throughout eternity.
But just as the glory of June emerges slowly from winter's frosts, so does the full revelation of the divine Life unfold slowly in the human consciousness. It is a truism indeed that no strong, stanch Scientist was ever made in a day or a year. Glimpses of divine realities do not alone make the steadfast worker; it takes line upon line, precept upon precept, and lesson upon lesson. We need to be very much awake, we who have started on this divine unfoldment, to heed every lesson, and to be very vigilant that the sunshine of Truth may light all the recesses of our thought and regenerate all our thinking.
On page 485 of Science and Health our Leader tells us to "emerge gently from matter into Spirit," and it is this lesson of gentle emergence which we all must learn, for it points to the only true growth. Can we tear open the bud and have the perfect rose? Which helps the wheat more, the hail or the rain? Perhaps our unfoldment may be so slow as to seem imperceptible at times, but of this we may be assured,—that all consecrated, faithful work does mean emergence from mortality and is known of God. True emergence, moreover, is always spiritual growth, not just the acquiring of better material conditions. Improved conditions are sure to come, for they are the inevitable "signs following;" but the place of regeneration is in human consciousness and the thing to watch is our thought.
