Article November 29, 1952 Issue

"FROM GLORY TO GLORY"

ETHEL MUNRO GOSS

Many of us have had the experience of being so conscious of the presence of divine power that we have been instantly lifted out of some discordant condition of sickness, fear, grief, resentment, loneliness, or any one of the myriad human beliefs that seem to bring suffering. At such a time we may have felt like the patriarch Jacob, who after his long wrestle through the night exclaimed (Gen. 32:30), "I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." Such an experience may have come to us after nights of struggle, or it may have come in a sudden moment of spiritual revelation when we have surrendered some phase of materiality and have had a glimpse of the utter nothingness of any power opposed to God. But whenever, or however, such visions of spiritual reality may occur, they are always the result of an increased understanding of the truth of God and man and are always healing and regenerative in their effect.

The Apostle Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians wrote (3:18), "We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." In Moffatt's translation of the Bible these words read as follows: "We all mirror the glory of the Lord with face unveiled, and so we are being transformed into the same likeness as himself, passing from one glory to another—for this comes of the Lord the Spirit." In the light of divine Science, which reveals man as the image of God, this statement by the apostle brings to human consciousness the possibility of beholding and expressing the glory of the perfect creation here and now. We learn through the teaching of Christian Science that these glimpses of the divine glory are not mere emotional experiences, but are the result of spiritualized consciousness beholding in the mirror of divine Science the perfect selfhood of man as the child of God.

In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 260): "The conceptions of mortal, erring thought must give way to the ideal of all that is perfect and eternal. Through many generations human beliefs will be attaining diviner conceptions, and the immortal and perfect model of God's creation will finally be seen as the only true conception of being." The marginal heading to this paragraph is "Spiritual discovery." How enriching was our Leader's discovery of the Science of Christianity, and how our spiritual horizon widens as we reach the diviner conceptions which this Science reveals.

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