Editorial December 3, 1927 Issue

Spiritual Ascendancy

Albert F. Gilmore

On page 19 of the Message to The Mother Church for 1901, Mrs. Eddy definitely states the means by which Christ Jesus was enabled to do the works which have been commonly described as miracles. "Let us remember," she writes, "that the great Metaphysician healed the sick, raised the dead, and commanded even the winds and waves, which obeyed him through spiritual ascendency alone." Spiritual ascendancy, then, was the means whereby Jesus overcame the so-called laws of nature and proved the entity and perfection of God's kingdom of perfect ideas.

In her teachings Mrs. Eddy has gone much farther than to point out the means and methods of Jesus' transcendental demonstration: she has shown her students how they, too, may gain in some degree at least the same ability to overcome the claims of materiality, the so-called forces and laws of nature; and the way is through the dominion which accompanies spiritual ascendancy. A fundamental fact which Christian Scientists learn in the beginning of their study is that God is both omnipotent and omnipresent: that He is the only power and the only presence. This fact alone laid hold of, grasped, and made one's own, would give one power over every claim arising from belief in another power and another reality than God and spiritual creation. But it seems that this paramount truth is rarely grasped in its full significance, and in consequence mortals struggle to overcome the various types of material beliefs which so constantly present themselves. "Here a little, and there a little," characterizes the process whereby spiritual truth is laid hold of; and yet, as spiritual truth gains the ascendancy in thought, definite progress is made in the destruction of false belief.

Material belief, that is, belief in a material universe and human personality as man, is the stumblingblock which seems to bar progress in spiritual attainment. To change our belief, then, is the necessity. In this transformation, faith in God—that He is, and that He is ever present and ever available to meet our needs—is the rock upon which our house of understanding is to be erected. This foundation securely laid, we go forward in gaining an understanding of God which will enable us to deny and refute the claims of an opposing creator and a false creation. Resistance of the so-called mortal mind would delay and estop progress; that is its character. But it will be successful only to the degree in which we admit its reality. We consent to and accept its claims, else erroneous belief would never encompass us. We accept the claims of material belief because they seem real to us. If, instead, we reject them because we know their falsity, they have no power to control or harm us.

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