RESURRECTION and ascension open up an endless spiritual vista, and become more wonderful as we begin to see how very closely they touch our individual experience and salvation. They are so closely related to each other that they are but one, for in our journey from sense to Soul they are naturally allied, and the one without the other is inconceivable. Both resurrection and ascension are steps in the awakening which the human consciousness is undergoing, steps by which the individual realizes the truth of being, and proves that the consciousness of man's real being extinguishes belief in a so-called material existence. Resurrection and ascension, therefore, are entirely mental; there is nothing material about them. They are the laying off of materiality; for in the light of Christian Science we begin to perceive the mental nature of all material experiences as fictitious suggestions of mortal mind, which have no place in real being.
Let us see what we may learn from those wonderful demonstrations of our Way-shower, which in awe and reverence we have called the resurrection and ascension, and which shine as beacon lights through the mist of materiality.
One of the most helpful things which Christian Science has done for humanity is that it shows Christ Jesus as the Way-shower, not as a supernaturally perfect or miraculous being, so far above us all that it would amount to sacrilege to expect or even attempt to walk in his footsteps. If Christ Jesus is the Way-shower, does not this imply that his way is, and was, the normal way for all mankind? It must therefore be feasible for a human being to follow the Way-shower in all the steps he has taken in living the life which reflects Life, God. Life is God just as much now as in the days when Jesus walked among men in the Holy Land; and it was the understanding of the facts of Life, and the consequent demonstration of the Life that is God, which led Jesus to the complete demonstration of true being, seen in his resurrection and ascension.
