Article October 30, 1920 Issue

Awake

ERNEST A. S. WHITTARD

Throughout the Bible, the word sleep constantly is used in a symbolic sense, frequently conveying the meaning either of death or a deadness and dullness of apprehension of things spiritual. It was during the deep sleep that fell upon Adam, as recorded in the second chapter of Genesis, that the delusion regarding the material so-called life originated, when woman was supposed to be formed from one of Adam's ribs. This false belief arising from a condition equivalent to self-hypnosis was the reversal of the previous account of the true and spiritual creation in which God made man in His own image and likeness, giving him dominion over all, after which He pronounced His creation finished, and further, "saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." It is the supposititious perpetuation of this dream of material creation, but in slightly changed form, that to-day causes, as it has all down the centuries, the belief of life and intelligence in matter and of man as a creator producing and reproducing his own species, mankind.

When one awakes from this Adam-dream, he recognizes and acknowledges that supremacy of the spiritual creation which destroys all mortal sense and sets thought and understanding firmly on the rock of spiritual existence, the only existence, and from which point alone we can in reality find the true sense of Life. Mortality and materiality are opposed to and are the reverse of Life, which is Spirit, God, infinite and eternal. Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 529), "Another change will come as to the nature and origin of man, and this revelation will destroy the dream of existence, reinstate reality, usher in Science and the glorious fact of creation, that both man and woman proceed from God and are His eternal children, belonging to no lesser parent."

Sleep produces oblivion, darkness, whereas God, Spirit, is light; and as one awakes from the false dream sense, Truth, light, and Life unfold. When Christ Jesus was told that Lazarus was dead he said, "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep." Again, when called to the house of a ruler whose daughter, to human belief, lay dead, he said, "Give place: for the maid is not dead, but sleepeth." In both cases the power of the Christ, Truth, awoke the so-called dead from the false dream and the light of spiritual sense dawned for them through the clear vision of Jesus of the true man, created by God, eternally perfect and spiritual. This spiritual awakening annulled the false claim of death, which is the underlying fear that produces almost every form of discord and inharmony. Jesus' teachings and demonstrations were not only for those who actually heard his sayings and witnessed his deeds, but are equally for us to-day and for all future generations to recognize as the correct application of the spiritual Life-laws which alone now and eternally govern man. Let us, then, accept to the utmost of our capacity the truth regarding man and his relationship to God, the only creator, utilizing this knowledge daily, and by constant righteousness—right thinking—arrive at the full realization of Paul's words which he wrote to the Colossians: "For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory."

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