Article May 13, 1922 Issue

The Judgment Day

FLORENCE A. GUBBINS

How truly wonderful, to those who loved the sacred Scriptures before coming to the study of Christian Science, is the new tongue therein revealed, whereby they are enabled to see the glory of the ever present God, good, who is meeting their needs to-day even as He did the needs of the children of Israel in the wilderness. Even before the student has proved for himself, from this new viewpoint, the healing power of God's Word, he listens to the reading of the Bible with an interest that never wanes; but he makes the experiences of prophets and apostles his own only in degree that he demonstrates Christian Science.

Many of us can remember the fears with which we used to contemplate a day of judgment, as described in the Revelation of John and misinterpreted by us. Our ideas of God were inseparable from the conception of a stern judge, who intended sooner or later to expose all our shortcomings in a vast courthouse, where the whole would be assembled to hear judgment pronounced upon us. That all our neighbors would likewise be subjected to the same trying ordeal was, perhaps, imagined to be some consolation; but, in any case, most of us carried this fear with us from the days of our childhood. On page 291 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, is found the deathblow to this false material concept in these words: "No final judgment awaits mortals, for the judgment-day of wisdom comes hourly and continually, even the judgment by which mortal man is divested of all material error."

In the book of Revelation John writes: "I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them." Does this not illustrate what occurs when a patient is healed in Christian Science practice? Through the enthronement of truth in human thought, the material sense of error flees away. Spiritual discernment estimates great and small experiences by the standard of Truth illustrated in that further statement of John, "I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God." The dead can only mean the false beliefs about God, the universe, and man; but these beliefs can never have been real, because God, Truth, is the only Life. John goes on to describe how the judgment of Truth is put into operation by the opening of "the books." Does not this opening of a book typify the revelation of a divine purpose? The "little book" spoken of in the tenth chapter of Revelation is identified by our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, as the revelation of Christian Science. "The books," taken in this connection, would signify the revelation of Truth, as recorded in the Bible, seen in the light of the spiritual understanding revealed in Science and Health: "And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works." This judgment day is always occurring in Christian Science healing; and will continue to occur so long as a belief in something apart from God remains to be destroyed.

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