When one considers the term "gravitation," thought may be inclined to turn towards the attraction between the earth and material objects and to the story of Newton and the falling apple. But mankind has long been intrigued by the ability of birds to overcome the earth's gravitational pull and to soar upward in the air, many of them with so much ease and grace. In a passage in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy says (pp.51,512), "The fowls, which fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven, correspond to aspirations soaring beyond and above corporeality to the understanding of the incorporeal and divine Principle, Love."
For many years prior to her discovery of Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy's thought had been soaring upward, gravitating away from matter to Spirit, God. She sought an understanding of the law by which Christ Jesus and his immediate followers were enabled to heal the sick and to demonstrate the power of Christianity. A few years after her discovery of this law underlying spiritual healing, Mrs. Eddy published the textbook.
It was subsequent to this date, 1875, at a time when human thought was beginning to grasp something of the true nature of God as Mind, Spirit, to gravitate away from matter, and to soar upward with spiritual aspiration, that men were enabled to build a heavier-than-air flying machine that could be navigated in the air. An airplane in its flight has to meet and overcome the resistance of the earth's gravitational pull; so we, as we endeavor to gravitate in thought to God, Spirit, find that we have to meet and overcome the resistance of material sense.
