Article November 20, 1915 Issue

Ascending Life

DR. EDMUND F. BURTON

While material things can never adequately illustrate spiritual truths, yet we may catch glimpses of reality through our human experiences, even as those to whom the parables of the Master were spoken found in them truths whose statement he had adjusted to their comprehension. A ballon trip some time since gave me food for thought in this direction, since it supplied an illustration of the fact that the study of Christian Science keeps the mind so open to Truth that every experience may become a finger pointing to the allness of Spirit.

As the basket in which I stood was lifted from the ground by the golden sphere above it, the first sensation was that of a rapidly widening horizon, which seemed to rise swiftly all about me like a huge ring. The surface of the earth took on the appearance of a level plain. All inequalities were merged in a great tessellated carpet of green, brown, and gold. The highways became ribbons, and then threads of white crossing the parti-colored map below, but in them were no steep or rough places, from this point of view. The city which had seemed a great confusion, became orderly and peaceful, and as we passed over the surrounding country its long straight roads, its meadows, farms, and forests, presented a picture of beauty and order in entire contrast to that received by the near-by observer.

As I looked down on the landscape which had thus become so calm and quiet, I remembered the words of Isaiah, "Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: . . . and the rough places plain." Then as I looked upward and thought of the invisible force which was bearing me away from the familiar earth, I was reminded of Mrs. Eddy's words, "Rise in the strength of Spirit" (Science and Health, p. 393), and realized anew the truth of Jeremiah's statement that "the way of man is not in himself," and that, save by a strength entirely apart from ourselves and above everything partaking of the nature of personality, we cannot escape from material limitations. I also saw that while that which was lifting me so rapidly was, in comparison with the mass of the heavier atmosphere, but a mere bubble, yet by virtue of its nature it was freeing me from the law that said I could not rise above the ground on account of my nature; and the words of Jesus, "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed," came to me with new significance. Faith is substance, truth manifest to human consciousness; and although our apprehension of Truth may seem "little," yet by its inherent power the dawning Christ-idea is able to save; it does make the honestly aspiring superior to the law of sin and death.

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