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"Lift thou up thy rod"
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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March 25, 1916 issue
View Issue-
Self-examination
HON. CLARENCE A. BUSKIRK
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Beauty and Holiness
ETHEL MUNRO GOSS
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Study Made Practical
ERNEST C. MOSES
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"Lift thou up thy rod"
EARL J. STEVENSON
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Making a Demonstration
DORA E. UPTON
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"The lens of Science"
BERTHA V. ZEREGA
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No Loss in Mind
MABEL WILLIS REEL
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Formerly the members of Mrs. Eddy's household and many...
Judge Clifford P. Smith
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In the articles entitled "Twentieth Century Religion" and...
Samuel Greenwood
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The letter of a correspondent drawing attention to a booklet...
J. Arnold Haughton
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Deity is properly a synonym of God. Divinity, as defined...
Carl E. Herring
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Christian Science takes the Bible as its sufficient guide to...
W. D. Hinchsliff
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In connecting Christian Science with "science falsely so...
M. I. Whitcroft
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Christian Science neither teaches nor practises healing by...
Duncan Sinclair
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"Let them alone"
Archibald McLellan
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"If ye abide in me"
John B. Willis
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From Belief to Understanding
Annie M. Knott
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Admission to Membership in The Mother Church
John V. Dittemore
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The Lectures
with contributions from George C. Roy, Claude U. Stone, R. B. Irons, Ernest Best, James A. Harris
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I consider it a duty as well as a great privilege to testify...
Arthur H. Owen with contributions from Ada C. Owen
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I have been healed by absent treatment of an aggravated...
Stella Hoffman
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I desire to express my gratitude for the healing of our son
Bertha M. Keller with contributions from August P. Keller
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In April, 1914, I was thrown from an automobile and...
Edith Davis Gurnee
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It is with a grateful heart that I tell of the blessings I have...
Erwin W. Augustin
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Counting up the many blessings that have come to me...
Mary E. Yarnall
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It would indeed be hard to tell all that Christian Science...
Mattie Messenger
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From Our Exchanges
with contributions from Clyde Weber Votaw, Rembert G. Smith, J. H. Jowett, William Ralph Inge, Charles P. Anderson