Article March 23, 1918 Issue

Those for whom the Bible has been illumined by Christian Science,...

The Christian Science Monitor

Those for whom the Bible has been illumined by Christian Science, see in the iterated metaphor of the Scriptures allusion to the appearing to human consciousness of the spiritual idea. One traces, moreover, a growing clearness of that perception of the truth of being, from the dim beginnings of faith in the unseen reality, to the scientific understanding and demonstration of that reality. In a certain figure, the spiritual understanding of God is likened to a city, the conscious abiding place of spiritual sense. One reads of Abraham, that he "looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God;" by faith he grasped the fact that such a state of spiritual realization was possible to man, and that eventually it would be attained.

One reads also of multitudes who followed him, that they saw the promises "afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them;" of these it is said that God "hath prepared for them a city." Then, when one reads that John, centuries later on Patmos, "saw the holy city, new Jerusalem," one understands that this clear metaphysical perception was the Scriptural culmination of the successive appearings to human consciousness, in lesser degrees of vividness, of the same spiritual truth. It was surely her discernment of the continuity of the spiritual idea that led Mrs. Eddy to declare on page 271 of Science and Health, "Christ's Christianity is the chain of scientific being reappearing in all ages, maintaining its obvious correspondence with the Scriptures and uniting all periods in the design of God."

Now this heavenly city, new Jerusalem, describes symbolically a state of mind, involving the knowledge of God. This city, or understanding of divine Science, can be entered into only through spiritual sense. Citizenship therein is entirely conditional upon the extent to which a man is able to lay off his materialism, to exchange physical for spiritual perception. The least attempt to approach this city, or spiritual reality, is productive of a measure of emancipation from material beliefs, the measure being proportionate to the whole-heartedness of the approach. What Abraham perceived of the divine Principle of being was sufficient to enable him to exchange, on the mountain of Moriah, his belief in man as material for the truth that man is God's child, and to advance, as a result of his enlightenment, from the custom of human sacrifice to a less repulsive mode of sacrifice.

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