Editorial November 28, 1931 Issue

Jacob or Israel?

Violet Ker Seymer

Jacob dreamed of a ladder set up on the earth and reaching to heaven, with "the angels of God ascending and descending on it." In other words, he glimpsed the everpresence, harmony, and unity of good. In the ladder of our human experience there is only one rung at a time, and for each rung there is always the very angel or specific spiritual intuition which we are needing. Reaching out for it with faith, we rise to grasp it through understanding.

Christian Scientists think gratefully of Jacob's struggle with false material sense and of the brave obedience with which he held on to his vision of the real man until his consciousness, purged of pressing fear, greed, enmity, reflected Love's illumination. In this connection Mrs. Eddy writes on page 308 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," "When Jacob was asked, 'What is thy name?' he straightway answered; and then his name was changed to Israel, for 'as a prince' had he prevailed and had 'power with God and with men.'" Thereafter Jacob doubtless remembered to think of himself as Israel, the victor, rather than as Jacob, the struggler. Are we thinking of ourselves as Jacob or as Israel?

Isaiah writes, "One shall say, I am the Lord's; and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob." One who calls himself by the name of Jacob may mistakenly be a law to himself that the way of suffering is the way for him. He may be regarding the thorny road as the chief way of advance in Christian Science. But Mrs. Eddy writes (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 362), "Truth is won through Science or suffering: O vain mortals! which shall it be?"

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