Article December 6, 1924 Issue

Shake the Dust from off Your Feet

MARION GERTRUDE SIMMONS

It is related in the gospels that Jesus instructed his disciples, when he sent them forth to preach the kingdom of heaven and to heal the sick, "Whosoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet for a testimony against them." Taken in its literal sense this might seem to be vindictive; but as Jesus was sending them forth on a mission of love and healing, it is evident that this could not be the meaning of his instruction, and would also be at variance with all his teachings. Mrs. Eddy says in our textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 320), "The one important interpretation of Scripture is the spiritual." And when we examine this passage in the light of spiritual understanding, as gained through Christian Science, we can receive much valuable instruction from it.

The disciples were sent out bearing the message of Truth and healing to all who would receive it,—the truth of God, Spirit, as the only creator, and of man as His image and likeness. So may it not have been that Jesus saw the necessity of warning the disciples to keep themselves from materiality,—that which rejected the spiritual idea,—preventing its entering their consciousness and soiling their understanding of Truth? May he not have been warning them to watch that no resentment, anger, or impatience should mar the beauty of holiness and dim their clear vision of it, thus hindering the message of healing and love from reaching, in its stainless purity, others ready to receive the spiritual idea? Have not we ourselves been tempted to let resentment manifest itself when some one has refused to accept the message of love which we knew would help them in every way, if they would only accept it? And here is where error tries to spoil our service by its false suggestions,—endeavoring, by placing us on its own material level, to make us believe in a power apart from God.

Mrs. Eddy defines dust as "nothingness; the absence of substance, life, or intelligence" (Science and Health, p. 584). Therefore, may not to shake the dust from off our feet mean to free ourselves from the belief that there is any reality in matter, to know that since God is all substance, Life, and intelligence, and ever present, the belief that He and His qualities are absent is without foundation, and without power to affect the truth? In Isaiah we read, "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings." Surely, then, our feet should be kept free from impurity, in order to bear God's message in the beauty of holiness,—wholeness,—to save mankind from bondage to sin, sickness, and death. On page 558 of our textbook, in speaking of divine Science, Mrs. Eddy writes: "Its feet are pillars of fire, foundations of Truth and Love. It brings the baptism of the Holy Ghost, whose flames of Truth were prophetically described by John the Baptist as consuming error." Here, again, we have the idea of purification in the words "fire" and "baptism." Does it not, therefore, behoove us to keep our consciousness clear and pure, so that the foundations of Truth and Love shall be unspotted by the dust of materiality, wherein is no stability to uphold, heal, or support?

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