AMONG the many inspiring messages that come to us from the prophet Isaiah, we find one in the form of a question: "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength? . . . Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in the winefat?" Then follows the simple human answer, but without bitterness or complaint: "I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me: ... and I looked, and there was none to help; and I wondered that there was none to uphold." Though these words pertain especially to the Messiah, in them may be read the life-story of almost all who have earnestly striven to overcome the beliefs of material existence, and to leave the human for the divine. It is a straight and rugged road; but it is comforting to be told by one who knew the pathway as Mary Baker Eddy knew it that, as she writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 454), "Love inspires, illumines, designates, and leads the way."
Those who awaken to the spiritual sense of existence, even in slight degree, are apt to desire an immediate and complete transformation. They wistfully long for garments that are "white and glistering," even from the start, and that will continue so. It is unavoidably true that
"Heaven is not reached at a single bound;
But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly earth to the vaulted
skies,
And we mount to its summit round by
round."
