Article March 25, 1916 Issue

"Lift thou up thy rod"

EARL J. STEVENSON

Anciently a rod was used as a symbol of spiritual understanding, and its spiritual significance has since grown clearer at each successive step in the line of higher thinking, until in this latter day, the symbol having disappeared before the effulgence of the Christ-idea, the active Christian Scientist is now found turning to that for which the rod stood, just as naturally as the flower turns its face to the sun for refreshing.

As we thus look beyond the symbol to that which it symbolized, we clearly perceive that the command given to Moses at the Red Sea, "Lift thou up thy rod," becomes just as applicable to those of the present age, engrossed with the problems of human experience, as it was to the great Hebrew lawgiver in that long ago when he faced the waters through which he must pass in escaping with the Israelites the approaching armies of their Egyptian taskmasters. Moses' obedience to what this command implied rolled back the surging waters before him, thus enabling him and all the host of Israelites to pass through safely on dry land, while their pursuing enemies were lost in the midst of the sea, which closed in upon them.

Prior to reaching the exalted state of consciousness requisite to this great demonstration, however, we find Moses confronted by many temptations to discouragement. At the very threshold of the work appointed him, we find his understanding obscured by a sense of fear due to suggestions of unfitness and inability to do God's work. It was at this crucial point in his experience, when his rod was "cast down," that there appeared wriggling in the dust of his material vision a serpent; but as soon as the mortal sense was reversed or destroyed, the spiritual sense reappeared, and was made to serve him in the higher and fuller demonstrations of his further career. The difficulties thus experienced by Moses and his people, and from which they were extricated, but typifies human experience with its myriad asserted laws and manifestations of evil; and it is this impersonal evil or lie which each mortal must fearlessly face, grapple, and wrestle with daily, hourly, momentarily, before it is fully subjugated and he is permitted to hear the benediction, "Enter thou into thy rest."

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