Editorial March 1, 1919 Issue

Spiritualization and Transfiguration

William P. McKenzie

Human beings seem to themselves to be nested in matter and to be as helpless as baby birds to make heavenward flights. Nevertheless to every one must come with certainty the quickening of the spiritual nature. The benign influences of Spirit we may receive, or they may be resisted because we strive for our own way. Do we not too often hold ourselves irresponsive to these uplifting influences, excusing ourselves by such arguments devoid of logic as were used by those invited to the great supper of the parable? We are told how the guests declined their invitations. One said, I have bought a farm and now I must go and look at it. Consider me excused. Another, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I must now try them. And the third, I have become married and so cannot go. Excuses just as tawdry are continually made even to-day. One individual sinks down into invalidism like a mollusk; another lapses into luxury like a degenerate Roman of the days when the empire was waning; another climbs into pride, seeking the throne of a demon or controller of the minds of men. In a general way they all make excuses that now is the time for ease in matter and for materialism of thought; and yet Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 382), "If half the attention given to hygiene were given to the study of Christian Science and to the spiritualization of thought, this alone would usher in the millennium."

The young men of the nations have been enduring the hard discipline of war. Facing death in its sudden forms they have had to ask themselves about life, and calmly, as a rule, they have settled it with themselves that life is not at the mercy of a material organism, that consciousness endures, and that somehow there is no need for fear. Those who know Christian Science recognize that the basis for assurance and peace is Principle, and they are striving earnestly to make thought spiritual because "the things of the Spirit of God" are, as Paul shows us, "spiritually discerned." He also says, "For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace."

All those who think may be wisely warned that in the era of sorrow for those sacrificed to save the world, there may appear the offer of a false consolation. What has been termed spiritualism may have a recrudescence through mediums, who profess as necromancers to hold communion with the dead or claim to draw back into the flesh those who have died. The teaching of Christian Science is plain enough, as is brought out in the textbook (Science and Health, p. 76), "When advanced to spiritual being and the understanding of God, man can no longer commune with matter; neither can he return to it, any more than a tree can return to its seed."

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