Editorial August 27, 1904 Issue

"Awake, thou that sleepest."

In Mr. Abbey's pictorial setting of the legend of Sir Galahad and the Holy Grail, he has very successfully portrayed in the knight's pose and expression, his utter discomfiture at the moment when he finds that he has forgotten the magical word by which he was to have broken the spell of spiritual death that bound King Amfortas, with all the inmates of the Castle of the Grail. At that moment his call, his consecration, his high purpose, his years of devoted preparation for the demands of knighthood,—all counted for naught, because he had not retained right consciousness. Until this awakening was realized, his holy quest must fail, and there was left him only the remembrance of a lost opportunity, the companionship of self-reproach.

The story reminds us of the frequent Scriptural references to this mortal life as, "a sleep and a forgetting;" and of the teaching of Christian Science that whatever of weakness and inadequacy may characterize our present Christian endeavor, it is explained by our fearsome forgetfulness, the feebleness of our grasp upon fundamental truths of Being,—the allness of God and His manifestation, the dignity and authority of man, the nothingness of evil, and the powerlessness of mesmeric belief in the presence of spiritual understanding.

The more common thought, perhaps, of spiritual development is patterned after the growth of a seedling. A center of life assimilates nourishment, enlarges its bounds, its strength, its fruitage, and ultimately reaches the completion of its kind. This figure serves our convenience, but it very imperfectly expresses the nature of our growth into the realization of the divine likeness. This is not a process, it is an awakening, a perception, a discovery of what is,and the significant gain of this true concept is in its sensible elimination of the time element. The generally accepted necessity of this factor means weakness of faith, and according to our faith so is our demonstration.

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