Article May 20, 1922 Issue

Girded with Gladness

ANNE CLEVELAND CHENEY

Nature's symbol of renascence could never have been more deeply welcome than it is this spring. It is the message of rebirth, which girds the earth with gladness each year and is felt by all, consciously or unconsciously, from the little child, running eagerly over the wakened meadow for the first dandelion, to the sagest philosopher, glancing from his books toward the blossomy branch that beckons him beyond his study window. The sweet breath of burgeoning, the color creeping through the landscape in misty gold of forsythia spray, and reddening hedgerows, and greening birches,—all are lovely signs of awakening, freshness, newness, and may typify to mortals the true rebirth.

Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, has said in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 129), "The nod of Spirit is nature's natal." She knew the real universe to be the reflection of Spirit, Mind, made up of divine Mind's perfect and indestructible ideas (of which the material world is but a faint counterfeit), and the true, transcendent gladness to be drawn from those glories which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man—the material sense—imagined,—the glories that await only those who love the one God and acknowledge Him, Spirit, to be the Maker and substance of all that exists, at whose creative mandate reality appears.

The awakening, the new birth in spiritual understanding, is what was meant by him who proved the impossibility of any death-process encroaching upon the real man or the real universe. Christian Science makes clear the command of Jesus, the master Metaphysician, when he bade us not to marvel that he said we must be born again. It is a truism,—and how beautiful!—that spring symbolizes in perfection of detail the process of being born again. As the floral spikes push vigorously through the environing soil, then in gentle unfoldment burst the binding sheath of yet another encumbrance, until firm purity and perfection rise free; so human consciousness, under the quickening light of Truth, issues forth from materiality, through one imprisoning belief of limitation after another, into the boundless atmosphere of Soul. Small wonder that, in spite of the Master's injunction, mortals do marvel at the process of rebirth! It is brought out thus in Mrs. Eddy's "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 361): "When the belief in material origin, mortal mind, sensual conception, dissolves through self-imposed suffering, and its substances are found substanceless,—then its miscalled life ends in death, and death itself is swallowed up in Life,—spiritual Life, whose myriad forms are neither material nor mortal." Thus one sees how, at the summons of Spirit, the entire universe—including man—comes forth as the idea of Mind, only that being real which reflects or shows forth Life indestructible, Love all-pervading and perfect.

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