"And as we rise, the symbols disappear;
The feast, though not the love, is passed and gone;
The bread and wine remove, but Thou are here—
Nearer than ever—still my Shield and Sun."
These words from the Christian Science Hymnal mean much to every student of Christian Science. They recall the great liberation that has come to us, the trappings having dropped away, often unnoticed, like the butterfly's chrysalis. One by one have superstitions, fears, indulgences, and unworthy traits disappeared, as the real man was discerned in ourselves and others.
The arousing spur to genuine thinking for one's self comes at the first discovery that happiness and substance are not in material things, as they are believed to be, but that there is a great unseen reality all about us sustained in perfect harmony by God, divine Mind, who creates and maintains all that is real. The world has so completely accepted a belief in matter as substance that matter has assumed the inevitability of reality. The great truths of creation as set forth in the first chapter of Genesis have been unheeded by the worldly-minded. A state of supine complacency in materiality may obtain with mortals until the burdens which this belief imposes press their claims beyond endurance. When this hour comes, the suffering one timidly knocks at the door of spiritual opportunity, and it opens to him.
