"One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day," writes Peter in his second epistle. On page 504 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy illuminates this statement with the following interpretation: "The rays of infinite Truth, when gathered into the focus of ideas, bring light instantaneously, whereas a thousand years of human doctrines, hypotheses, and vague conjectures emit no such effulgence." Advancing humanity is constantly reaching out for its thousand years of peace and plenty, for a long drawn surcease from sorrow and suffering; but behold, here is the millennium, to be had on the instant, as a brilliant light of spiritual understanding, burning away all time, all personal sense, and a false belief of the universe as matter, leaving the infinite Truth and its manifestation resplendent and triumphant. More than an interval of beneficial government or a mere cessation from war, the spiritual millennium is a glorious state of consciousness in which a thousand years "are but as yesterday when it is past;" in which "one thousand shall flee at the rebuke of one," and that one the light of Truth instantly operative.
The time is ripe for metaphysics. The handling of the evil which endeavors to darken consciousness must be done by those who are spiritually awake. "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead," admonishes the writer of the epistle to the Ephesians. The stagnant, apathetically minded, the neutral thought which is hand-clasped with error, needs to be aroused from the sleep of death. For to be mentally neutral is to side with evil, but to use the adroit idea may be equivalent, to a golden silence before thine accuser. The precious moments are passing and every soldier of the Lord should be equipped with spiritual armor, should be so alert to the enemy that not one argument of hate can penetrate the barricade of righteousness. The right doer is under the protection of the Almighty, safely guarded and guided by the power of eternal Love.
Down in the abyss of the human mind there dwells the evil planner, the schemer, the accuser, the striker, and the false brother, but the searchlight of truth thrown upon this mistaken belief of existence turns the betraying quality of the human mind into falsity and routs out the seeming by replacing it with the divine declaration, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord." Then, if the Scriptures be true, there is nothing God cannot do. Into the depths of depravity God goes with healing power and cleanses away the filth of mortal mind. The darkness of fear is made the place of God's glorious sunshine through the application of Christian Science.
