A few years ago a portable rocket was developed that, when strapped to a man's back, could provide enough thrust partially to overcome the pull of gravity. This device, designed for Army maneuvers, could project a man eighty feet in the air for a distance of over eight hundred feet and enable him to run with the speed of a racehorse, jump across rivers, and scale walls without any sense of fatigue.
This fascinating departure in the realm of physics, apparently only a forerunner of more ambitious developments in the same field, suggests a spiritual parallel in the upward thrust of exalted thinking that counteracts the seeming downward pull of animal magnetism, or evil mind. Christian Science teaches us that animal magnetism works as and through the claim of life in matter. As the truth of being—the spiritual perfection of man as he exists in Life, God—lifts us above this claim, we are mercifully freed from the limiting arguments of the carnal mind. Mrs. Eddy wrote to a Normal class in 1905, "Released from materialism, you shall run and not be weary, walk and not faint."The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 254; Without the earth-weights of mortal belief imposed by physical sense, an individual naturally enjoys unhampered freedom. He can indeed run and not be weary. His sphere of usefulness expands a hundredfold. This release from matter's claims does not come in a moment. It entails consistent, steadfast prayer and demonstration of spiritual truths.
Christ Jesus said, "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me."John 12:32; His earthly experience was a continual, progressive lifting up, culminating in the ascension. With each proof of ascendancy over matter he was lifting himself and others a step nearer the realization of complete dominion, or the demonstration of heaven here and now.
