Editorial September 6, 1930 Issue

On Prophecy

Violet Ker Seymer

CHRISTIANLY scientific thinking, which is the basis of true prophecy, is within reach of all mankind. Knowing this, Paul, of large heart and vision, declared, "For ye may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn, and all may be comforted." All must therefore cease to prophesy erroneously, if they would be God's prophets and not prophets of the so-called carnal mind. A teachable spirit is a necessity, for only in true learning are true healing and comfort to be found. Christian Scientists are God's present-day prophets in action; they are seers of good, demonstrators of good, hastening their own and the world's salvation from all in-harmony.

On page 593 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy defines "prophet" as "a spiritual seer; disappearance of material sense before the conscious facts of spiritual Truth." Should a student of Christian Science find himself laid low with a sickness from which he suffered previous to taking up this study, he might find it difficult to blot out the recollection of a prolonged illness attended by certain physical symptoms and disabilities. Perhaps a shadow of belief in medical theories might still lurk in his thoughts, and he would need to be very alert lest he should be mentally preparing for another long siege as before. So doing, he would be prophesying according to precedent instead of according to Truth itself. This would be a blind prophecy, not a seer's prophecy.

In order to be true prophets to-day, we must go farther back than any human precedent, even back to primeval Truth. Sin, war, materiality, have no precedent in spiritual being and can lay no just claim to the appropriation of past, present, or future. These divisions of the mortal belief in time have no place in the unbroken continuity of Spirit. As scientific thinkers we must therefore continually, and without exception, foresee the obliteration of discordant conditions through the "disappearance of material sense," which is the only medium through which discord can claim cognizance. Material sense itself must be denied—not merely the discord to which it appears to bear testimony.

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