CORRECTLY viewed, everything appreciable to human thought has spiritual significance. Mary Baker Eddy indicates this in her "Miscellaneous Writings," where she says (pp. 60, 61), "Every material belief hints the existence of spiritual reality; and if mortals are instructed in spiritual things, it will be seen that material belief, in all its manifestations, reversed, will be found the type and representative of verities priceless, eternal, and just at hand."
The conditional clause in this profoundly simple sentence deserves special consideration: "if mortals are instructed in spiritual things." The Bible makes acceptance of spiritual instruction the way of individual salvation. Christian Science, resting on Bible teaching, shows how its lessons may be made applicable today. For instance, Moses' experience at the burning bush illustrates the significance which an understanding of God brings to daily living. To one immersed in materiality, the spectacle of a bush that burned without being consumed might have seemed awesome but inexplicable. To Moses, waiting for the revelation of God, it proved God's presence. The circumstance awakened him to understand God as the I AM, forever self -revealed as the infinite One, who guides and empowers His own.
Having heard materially the taunt of oppression against his people, the children of Israel, Moses thus learned that he could hear spiritually God's self-disclosure, assuring their freedom. Christian Science calls the capacity to understand God spiritual sense. This Science explains that what presented itself to Moses as his own indignation and helplessness over the bondage of his countrymen was merely material sense, which sense lost its hold on him as there dawned within his consciousness the true idea of God as the infinite One. Scripture makes it plain that Moses was willing to entertain the full spiritual significance of this experience. He heeded in complete humility the dictates of spiritual unfoldment. His awakened consciousness of God's omnipresence became to him the assurance of his own ability to serve God. He must have seen in a measure that the Love which called him was the Life which made him. Thereafter, he had wonderful proofs that God is with man. Even the barren wilderness and the flinty rock, when interpreted in the light of God's ever-allness, attested the amplitude of divine care.
