One cannot advance very far into the study of Christian Science without running into many passages wherein the words "inspire," "inspiration," and "inspirational" are found. Through prayer and consecration—through a constant communing with God—the receptive thought receives a flood tide of spiritual inspiration, and one feels the healing balm of divine Love pouring into consciousness.
Divine Love imparts; man receives. Thus as we reach forth with humility and prayer to our Father-Mother God we shall not fail to receive the blessings of Love's bounty. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy states (p. 454), "Love inspires, illumines, designates, and leads the way."
The pathway which everyone must take in the journey toward a higher understanding of the truth is the way of inspiration. It leads away from a false concept of life to a true understanding of what Life is. It guides us to a usable, demonstrable knowledge of what God is and what man is. This is the way which leads us to the spiritual consciousness wherein is no evil.
The Bible teaches us that God is Love and that He is "of purer eyes than to behold evil" (Hab. 1:13). Man, as God's image, or reflection, is also without any element of evil. Spiritual qualities constitute the elements of that perfect state of being. It is these qualities, comprising the nature and character of the Christ, which illumine human consciousness with the light divine. Thus the receptive thought becomes divinely inspired.
Christian Science not only enlightens human consciousness, but it also counteracts the erroneous influence of material suggestion. All evil falls before the benign and correcting operation of divine law in inspired, individual thought. Christian Science demands spiritual thinking, and spiritual thinking reveals divine Love as the basis of all inspiration. Truly inspired thought recognizes that all cause, effect, law, power, and intelligence belong to God alone.
To understand ourselves as God's representatives enables us to demonstrate the ability and power which God bestows on His likeness. When we see divine Mind as the source of all true intelligence and power, we realize our rightful heritage as the sons of God, as heirs to all the resources of eternal Spirit, infinite Mind. In the reflection of divine Love there is included spiritual inspiration, which irradiates love and light. This light not only illumines our own thought but is imparted to others and unfetters them from the so-called limitations of mortal sense.
An illustration of this may be recounted in the experience of a student of Christian Science. He had a friend and neighbor who was addicted to the alcohol habit. On one occasion the Christian Scientist was called upon by the friend, who was in an intoxicated condition, to help take him to his home. This good deed was done in a resentful, unloving manner by the Scientist, who felt that his pride had been trampled upon by this request which had been made of him. Thus the alcoholic was no better off and continued with his habit.
Several years elapsed, and the Christian Scientist gained more of the inspiration of Love. When called upon again by that same unfortunate friend, he looked upon him with pity and compassion and had a genuine desire to help him. Later he took the man to the local Christian Science Reading Room and supplied him bountifully with pamphlets and books on the subject of Christian Science. He also lovingly made some provision for this man, who was apparently in great financial distress.
Then the Christian Scientist moved to another city. As time went by, he had occasion to return temporarily to his former place of residence. On attending the Christian Science church services there, he was surprised and delighted to see his old-time acquaintance—a healed, regenerated man, a devout student of Christian Science, and a member of the Christian Science church. Here was the beneficiary of a good deed rendered through the inspiration of divine Love's bidding.
In adversity, the effort to rise out of the difficulty through our understanding of Christian Science is often accompanied by inspiration and heavenly aspiration. The basic truth which inspires us to act intelligently, fearlessly, and efficiently is the fact that God is the only Mind, that He is Love, and that Love inspires and illumines. In this inspiration we feel the divine presence.
One of the greatest Biblical examples of spiritual inspiration is that of the loved disciple of Christ Jesus, whom we know and speak of as St. John. Indeed his attainment of this divine inspiration earned for him the title of Revelator. He beheld with a purified, spiritualized consciousness things which were unknown to the unspiritualized human mind. This state of thought which characterized John is referred to by Mrs. Eddy in Science and Health as follows (p. 573): "The Revelator was on our plane of existence, while yet beholding what the eye cannot see,—that which is invisible to the uninspired thought."
Throughout his career as a loyal student and follower of Christ Jesus, John lived and practiced the wondrous truths he was taught. Through the consecration and purity which this tutelage of Christ's Christianity had unfolded to him, John indeed became inspired of God. It was some time after the ascension of Christ Jesus that John was exiled to the island of Patmos; and it was there in the quiet recesses of his inmost thought, in prayer and spiritual longings, that he heard the voice of an angel. He recorded the message which has brought inspiration and illumination to generations of Biblical students in that treasured portion of Scripture, the book of Revelation.
This wondrous book of prophecy portrays the drama of the warfare which is waged in human experience and won by the forces of Truth and Love. Here there is revealed the life which is "hid with Christ in God." The vision which is depicted in the book of Revelation, or the Apocalypse, is an illustration of divine reality which came to John's inspired thought and which must at some time come to the thought and into the life of every individual.
When John wrote (I John 3:2), "Beloved, now are we the sons of God," he was stating the fact that spiritual man is eternally united to divine Mind, the source of all true thought. It is divine Love that inspires us.
Our recognition of this fact makes us receptive, meek, and leads us to seek in the sacred Word the truth of being. It is at the standpoint of spiritual intuition and inspiration that there is a quickening of thought, an influx of divine light, like the tender rays of sunlight appearing above the horizon at the morning's dawn.
Inspiration is part of man's completeness and wholeness as Love's reflection. It is spiritual inspiration which enables one to see and to feel the healing touch of Truth, to reflect the light of Christ. In one of her loved poems our Leader asks (p. 75):
"Saw ye my Saviour? Heard ye the glad sound?
Felt ye the power of the Word?"
It is this "power of the Word" which heals and regenerates and saves. It is the "power of the Word" which was revealed to Mrs. Eddy. This Word gives the inspiration, the intuition, the spiritual discernment which reveal the divine nature of man and which bring to one the impartations of the Love that is divine. It is this understanding of divine Science which enables one to become, indeed, divinely inspired.
