Article December 19, 1931 Issue

"One lone, brave star"

ANNA STEWART FOX

At some time in the experience of us all there comes an illumination in some form which awakens new hope, fresh courage, a deeper conviction that there is a God. This piercing of our consciousness is the Christ dispersing the dense materiality enshrouding our true selfhood to such thinness that we glimpse, as it were, a star of such soft benevolent radiance, that we pause, prayerfully worshiping. Silently and almost unconsciously we pledge our obedience to this divine presence. We are touched by its hallowing influence to such a depth that we resolve to consecrate our lives to its service, that mankind may be blessed. Having drunk deep of the significance of this appearing of the Christ, we turn to it reverently for its own explanation of itself, for its further revelation of itself. The world seems hushed that we may adore this infant spiritual idea.

Then, almost imperceptibly, the false material beliefs that have claimed to be part of ourselves in this dream of self-conscious matter begin one by one to rouse themselves again and to take on a newly assumed strength. What shall we do? We may appear to fall helpless before some of them, while we rise gloriously superior to others through the conviction of their unreality. Christian warfare is on! What are some of these unlovely traits that claim life and power? Whence is the conviction that we are superior to such delusions? The belief of materiality has but one purpose in its claim to existence—to destroy the Christ-idea, of which Jesus left the promise, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." Material sense may claim to be expressed through us or toward us in acts of pride, selfishness, sensitiveness, injustice, jealousy, egotism, resentment, unmercifulness, thoughtlessness, and a myriad of other unlovely characteristics of an unreal nature. But though we may seem to be enmeshed in the mire of mortal mind, we can rejoice; for as Mrs. Eddy writes (Poems, p. 79):

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