PAUL learned many lessons from the Roman soldiers and athletes with whom he was closely associated for several years. He said, "I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection." While attending a performance one evening in company with others, a new line of thought was opened up to a student of Christian Science. Since childhood she had feared the sense of height, feeling insecure and dizzy when she had ascended above the ground or when seeing others in ascension, so on this occasion, during the flying trapeze work and aerial leaps, when a difference in the calculation of a second would mean a fall, if not destruction to those involved, such sensations governed her that she would not look up during that period of the performance. Instead she quietly devoted herself to controlling and calming her thought before it was noticed by the rest of the party. Later, for her own betterment, she endeavored to analyze her sense of fear and trace its origin.
It was soon apparent that its foundation was the old mesmeric belief that man is body; that the material law of gravitation is power; that matter can handicap, hinder, and prevent man from rising above its law of limitation, ultimately defeating him and forcing his downfall,—all of which, had the performers been bound by it, would have made their feats impossible. She found that through material eyes she was looking at a matter man, seeing in him and in his work only defeat, and so, overcome with fear herself, she was doing all that was possible to produce such results as she was anticipating. But thinking longer and rising into a higher mental altitude, she reasoned thus: Why should anyone fear and refuse to see height? Does not God fill all space? Is not God expressed in the air as surely as on the earth? Paul said, "For I am persuaded, that neither...height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God." Although those performing in the air may not be consciously realizing the truth of God's all-presence and power, still they know that such feats are possible or they would not attempt them. Thought precedes action. So it is really thought that governs the persons who ascend in mid-air. These individuals having already liberated themselves to some extent from mesmeric beliefs of limitation, prove themselves correspondingly immune from false mental suggestion and fear, and apply themselves to the accomplishment of that which they know to be possible. Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health, p. 199), "Had Blondin believed it impossible to walk the rope over Niagara's abyss of waters, he could never have done it....His fear must have disappeared before his power of putting resolve into action could appear."
Thought uninfluenced by fear and awakened to man's possibilities in a certain direction, is proof against mental suggestion and can hold its own as safely and as naturally in mid-air as on the ground. In the freer atmosphere of this mental unfoldment and enlightenment the student faced her former concept of man and asked herself this question: If mortal man, uninstructed in divine Science, could and did find it natural and normal to break the man-made laws as to what constitutes man's capabilities and his environment, to what height of thought, with its demonstration, should not the one who has awakened to discern spiritual man, in God's image and likeness, ascend? Breaking through the prison walls of doubt and fear, should it not be possible to the extent of here and now mounting up into spiritual realms,—at least into moments or periods of spiritual discernment and demonstration, without physical handicap, being as it were "caught away" by the Spirit as were Moses, Elisha, Elijah, Christ Jesus, John, Philip, and Paul? Our dear Leader says (Science and Health, p. 325), "Then shall man be found, in His likeness, perfect as the Father, indestructible in Life, 'hid with Christ in God,'—with Truth in divine Love, where human sense hath not seen man."
