TAKE heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the sabbath day, nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem," admonishes the prophet Jeremiah. Mrs. Eddy gives the spiritual meaning of "prophet," in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 593), as "a spiritual seer; disappearance of material sense before the conscious facts of spiritual Truth." In the light of Christian Science it is thus seen that the inspired utterances of the seers point to the eternal verities of being and the ascendancy in every age of the Messianic ideal in human consciousness. Omniscient, omnipresent Truth, divine Principle, is available in all times and places.
The spiritual point of view in Christian Science clarifies the meaning of the Scriptures. So Jeremiah's exhortation may be seen to carry a message of present-day actuality. Its spiritual import arouses in the student a more consecrated effort to liberate his thinking from the false mental suggestions that would mar with aggressive presentments the purity of Christian metaphysics. Have we allowed fear, worry, sorrow, resentment, impatience, unkindness, criticism, unspiritual desires and indulgences, personal ambition, pride, envy, procrastination, mental laziness, and their kin—the hard taskmasters of the pseudolord, material sense—to halt our progress Spiritward? Thought thus burdened is unable to enter in through the gates of the heavenly kingdom. Because of the opposite natures of Spirit and matter, a continuous alertness in weighing the evidence so constantly presented by sense-testimony is imperative. The line of separation between the true and the false, the real and the unreal, must be sharply drawn. If one's watchfulness lags, one need not wonder at feeling the weight of "burdens grievous to be borne."
Manifold are the discords which a false material sense of existence would impose upon the credulous one. A glaring instance is afforded by present world conditions. In accord with error's nature, the design of error in every instance is to becloud and confuse the issues involved. Error's meddlesomeness—in so far as we consent to serve as error's spokesmen—denotes but the claimed counterfeit of the omniactivity of Truth.
