Editorial November 4, 1916 Issue

Joyful Unfolding

William D. McCrackan

The student of Christian Science soon reaches the comforting assurance that he is not expected to create right conditions, but rather to see them unfold. This assurance is apt to bring great relief. Perhaps there may have been a temptation to ferret out evil, or to admit a sense of responsibility concerning the wilfully wayward. Then Christian Science, piercing the gloom, showed the way of joyful unfolding through the realization of Truth. Daylight dawns and shadows flee away.

Under the definition of "Day" in the Glossary of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy writes: "The objects of time and sense disappear in the illumination of spiritual understanding, and Mind measures time according to the good that is unfolded. This unfolding is God's day, and 'there shall be no night there' " (p. 584). In John's revelation of the kingdom of heaven there was no material light, and there was no need of material sun or moon, since God's presence supplied the only necessary light and excluded darkness and night. In human experience, however, there seem to be nights as well as days, twilights as well as dawns, which means that there are times of greater or less spiritual enlightenment and even moments of deep darkness for mankind. Every practical Christian Scientist, willing to be evangelized by the demands of God, recognizes these gloomy experiences as transitory and as capable of being turned to spiritual profit. The question invariably presents itself in these hours of temptation and test, when the grain is being separated from the chaff upon the hard floor of tribulation, whether the occasion is to be made one of mere plodding effort or of joyful unfolding. Shall the trial by fire in which the wood, hay, and stubble are burned and the gold is refined, be regarded as a calamity or recognized as a means of purification and of growth?

The delicate ferns and the spreading bracken unfold their fronds in springtime within the shadow of the forest. They do not fear to grow by unfoldment. The spiritually-minded must permit their God-given abilities to unfold and develop under the tender protection of Science, rejoicing the while that they are witnessing the real creation, the revelation to human apprehension of that which has always been. In that wonderful chapter entitled Genesis, in the Christian Science text-book, the meaning of which dawns upon the comprehension of the astonished student as nothing short of a divine revelation, we read: "There is but one creator and one creation. This creation consists of the unfolding of spiritual ideas and their identities, which are embraced in the infinite Mind and forever reflected" (p. 502).

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Editorial

Letters from the Soldiers