Article May 8, 1909 Issue

THE TURN OF CAPTIVITY

MARY I. MESECHRE

It has been said that human life is made up or contrasts. To us who have begun to know life in its true meaning, as interpreted through Christian Science, it is given to see more and more clearly the disparity between our former sense of existence and our present attainments, and to foresee in some measure the growth which will bring us to a realization of the standard of ultimate perfection which hourly demands our unceasing efforts, and to whose loving insistence we gladly and gratefully yield.

At some point on our journey "from sense to Soul" (Science and Health, p. 566), this contrast between past and present is so startling as to impress itself upon our consciousness with the effect of a sudden awakening. Till then we have been dreamers, we have been sleep-walkers; we have grown, truly, but as it were in darkness, dimly conscious of light. But in an instant our consciousness is flooded with the knowledge of that ineffable light which has so long shone upon our closed eyes, of that insistent Love which has so long enfolded us in its tender ministering, of that invincible Truth whose voice has so long sounded vainly to our dulled ears—and the dream breaks, we begin to awaken, to find ourselves no longer the hopeless bondmen of materiality, but the freemen of God. We have passed from serfdom to sonship; we have reached the turn of our captivity.

The psalmist sang: "When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing." Is there anything equal to the joyousness of a newly awakened soul? It is a new creation, for all things "are become new." We wonder how we could have dreamed so long. We forget everything but the joy and freedom of being awake. All sense of bondage has fled, and we speak only to rejoice and sing praise to Him who hath turned our captivity into freedom. But there is more than this to freedom. Joyousness is so rare that it is proportionately attractive, and all about us are those still fettered by material sense, longing in the midst of their bonds for the touch of the liberator, and our joy makes known to them our release from captivity, and they begin to say of us, "The Lord hath done great things for them."

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