Article October 12, 1918 Issue

Spiritual Discernment

FRANK H. SPRAGUE

It is recorded in Luke's gospel that two of the disciples, journeying to Emmaus on the day of the resurrection, were joined by Jesus himself. So obsessed, however, was their thought with the belief that he was dead, that even after he had "expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself," "their eyes were holden that they should not know him." Changed though his appearance undoubtedly was by the exalting ordeal from which he had just emerged triumphant over the beliefs of darkness and death, the disciples' failure to identify their risen Lord was obviously due to a lack of spiritual discernment. It was, indeed, this mortal blindness to spiritual realities, only in an aggravated and more perverse form, which hardened the hearts of the Pharisees, and led the apathetic multitude to consent to the crucifixion of the Nazarene whose ministry had been largely devoted to the alleviation of their sufferings; and it is, in a final analysis, a like mental condition which has sealed the doom of men and races throughout the ages.

"Perceive ye not yet, neither understand? ... Having eyes, see ye not?" was the Master's pointed reprimand to the twelve on one occasion. "Where there is no vision, the people perish," exclaimed the writer of Proverbs. It was not Roman statecraft nor Grecian culture but this vision of the Hebrew prophets that foreshadowed the Savior of the world; not the Jewish hierarchy but the wise men who, seeking truth and its spiritual enlightenment, beheld the star of him who was to rule all nations; and it is the spiritually discerning among men to-day who see, beyond the tempestuous fury of warring beliefs, the rainbow of promise spanning a new heaven and earth.

The listless nonchalance of the Galilean multitudes and the religious bigotry of the hypocritical Pharisees represented different aspects of the belief of mortal blindness. While the Pharisees were looked upon as an exemplary class because of their punctilious observance of the letter of Judaic codes, their disregard for the spiritual behests of the law and the prophets called forth from John the Baptist the scathing rebuke, "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" Christ Jesus, the great demonstrator of spiritual being, healed the sick, raised the dead, mastered insane and diabolical beliefs, fed multitudes, subdued the elements, set aside asserted laws of nature, and left the germ of spirituality securely planted in the depths of human consciousness. The only type of mortal belief that did not yield to the authority which his understanding of God's law enabled him to exercise while on this plane of existence, was the stigma of Pharisaism,—stultification of the moral sensibilities which resulted from indulging the most subtle and willful form of self-deception. Speaking of this aggravated condition of mental and moral blindness, he said to his self-righteous accusers, "If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth."

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