Article September 11, 1909 Issue

THE AWAKENING

WILLIAM HART SPENCER

From out the vagaries of the human mind there seem to come visions of reality, like objects looming up through a drift of fog. Our text-book teaches that "mortal existence is a dream" (Science and Health, p. 250), and our dream of life is expressed in thought-pictures, which panorama-like continually pass before us. Often assuming fantastic shapes, and lacking the guidance and control of understanding, these sense-images, like weeds in a garden, grow rank betimes and thus stifle the desire for love and purity.

Every one is conscious, however, in some degree, of the desirability of overcoming sin, even if only to avoid the intuitive human sense of loss or punishment, and the only remedy is to change absolutely the conditions; hence the vital importance of expurgating all that defiles, and of allowing our thought to dwell only on that which is good and pure. This habit will lead us to seek aid from a source outside and higher than our human selves, perceiving as we do that the mortal sense which is the medium of inharmony, cannot in any wise be the means of its removal.

In its inception, when we have been somewhat awakened by Spirit to the need of changing our lives for the better, the initial effort is generally in the line of an endeavor to govern our conduct. With the best of men there will come at times a condition of thought which is erratic, chaotic, riotous, evil, and the seeming reality of the flood which sweeps over us is apt to bring a sense of weakness; but if we hold strenuously to the letter of right action, that of itself is a victory, and we shall ultimately overcome the evil in our thought.

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