Article June 20, 1925 Issue

Spiritual Exaltation

ROSS S. PILLSBURY

Christian Scientists, who are earnest seekers after Truth, long for the attainment of the exalted spiritual condition which came to the disciples on that Pentecostal day when "they were all with one accord in one place." They desire this, that they too may with power and "signs following" be enduring witnesses of the blessed Word of God. The disciples had followed their Teacher and Guide with ever broadening vision, taking the necessary human footsteps as far as they were able. Thus they discerned more and more clearly man's spiritual identity, or the eternal nature of the Christ, Truth. Having witnessed the Master's ultimate of spiritual exaltation in his ascension, they rose to a clearer understanding than ever before of his words, "I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God."

According to one authority the Pentecostal day of the Jews was a day set apart upon which the people were obliged to repair to the temple of the Lord, there to acknowledge God's absolute dominion, and to offer thanks to Him for the law given at Sinai. So it was that, having continued instant in prayer and with the vision of the glorious demonstration of their Teacher ever with them, on the day of Pentecost the disciples were exalted far above any ordinary sense of the occasion, so that the light of spiritual understanding descended upon them, "and there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them." In the power of this further assurance of the omnipotence and omnipresence of the truth of their Master's teachings, the false claims of matter-substance became less to them, and they went forth to preach the Word, heal the sick, and even raise to life again those who believed they had died.

Christian Science teaches that progress, or individual spiritual exaltation, is realized only in the proportion that we gain the ascendancy over the belief of mind in matter, which endeavors to materialize Spirit, and, conversely, to spiritualize matter. "The determination to hold Spirit in the grasp of matter," writes our Leader in her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 28), "is the persecutor of Truth and Love." To the unenlightened human mind, gorged with the material intellectuality of the age, the teachings of the disciples seemed as "idle tales," and were not understood by it, even though, as recorded in the second chapter of Acts, each heard these teachings in his own native language or tongue.

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