Have you ever noticed the extraordinary sequence of ideas in these words of the prophet Isaiah? He writes (Isa. 40:31): "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." It is to be noted that the strength gained by waiting on the Lord, by turning confidently to divine power, as the Christian Scientist would put it, ultimates in soaring as on eagles' wings, in running without weariness, and in walking without fainting—all desirable results certainly, but set forth in a noticeably descending scale of activity.
The order of the words arrested the attention of the writer and proved to be the answer to two questions propounded to her by a young Christian Scientist who had seen active duty as an aviator during the war years.
"Why," he asked, "can we not always maintain the glorious confidence in God's all-power which we glimpsed during our war experience? We know it is true. We proved it. Why can't we prove it just as easily now, and get everybody to accept it?"
Probably the most obvious answer is that when mortals are placed in situations where all human supports fail, they often turn wholeheartedly to the divine, leaving no room for fear or doubt, indulging no human willfulness, making no reservation to honor some material, false god. Mary Baker Eddy states it thus (Luke 9:35), "This is my beloved Son," and glimpse man's forever oneness with his Maker. Yet, sacred as are these transfiguration moments, it is important for us to remember that our Exemplar, Christ Jesus, returned from his exalting experience to his daily work of healing the sick and sinning, which led eventually to his overcoming of death by proving that hatred, though it crucified the human Jesus, would never destroy the Christ.
And this brings us back to Isaiah's promise and to the rest of the answer for our aviator friend. It seems so much more inspiring to prove God's ever-presence in moments of crisis than it does in the little stresses of everyday living. But is it not necessary for us to go back to our daily round and common task and keep the glory of the transfiguration right there? Evidently the olden prophet had observed this necessity, and his beautiful figurative language serves to remind us that we need to prove God's power and strength in the more prosaic tasks of walking and not fainting, as well as in soaring on eagles' wings. And perhaps the order in which he placed the ideas indicates something important for us to understand. It does not always seem so interesting to walk without fainting, that is, to go steadily and consistently forward in our daily demonstration, as to mount up on wings as eagles or to run with unwearied step. Yet we need all of these experiences, one as much as the other, and we usually find that they all come to us.
If we are faithful adherents of Christian Science, we are coming to see that we have begun the study and proof of the greatest of all sciences—the Science of being. In this Science the laboratory is our daily life. We are concerned not with material test tubes, liquids, and solids, but with the substance of thoughts. The problems on which we are at work are primarily subjective, involving our own mental concepts of everything which constitutes our world. Christian Science furnishes us with the rule by which to solve these problems successfully. It gives us a divine Principle, a correct basis from which to reason—perfect God as cause and perfect universe as effect. From this basis, if we reason logically, we can refute and annul all the lying arguments of duality, of an evil presence and its evil effects.
The problems or experiments which are presented to the Christian Scientist involve a step-by-step overcoming of the claims of materiality with the facts of Spirit, even as Jesus overcame them. This need not be a slow or laborious process, but each step must be taken by the student for himself in the order demanded by progress. No one can perform another's experiments for him, and though we can receive a vast amount of help from those who have gone before us and worked out their problems successfully, and though we have the inspiration of the example of the greatest of all teachers, we must each faithfully perform the experiments set before us and apply for ourselves the rules of Christian Science. We shall discover that accuracy, consistency, and patience are essential ingredients in all scientific work.
Nothing short of perfection is our goal, to be achieved through the faithful replacing of mortality by immortality. Whether it be in the minutiae of daily living or in what we call the big crises of life, we must practice what we understand of Principle. This is why our great Leader, who discovered that Christianity is a Science to be lived and demonstrated, writes (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, pp. 253, 254): "The divine demand, 'Be ye therefore perfect,' is scientific, and the human footsteps leading to perfection are indispensable. Individuals are consistent who, watching and praying, can 'run, and not be weary; . . . walk, and not faint,' who gain good rapidly and hold their position, or attain slowly and yield not to discouragement. God requires perfection, but not until the battle between Spirit and flesh is fought and the victory won."
