Article February 8, 1936 Issue

Spiritual Awakening

PETER B. BIGGINS

The Psalmist, rejoicing in the divine ever-presence "that keepeth Israel," declares that God "shall neither slumber nor sleep." Man, made in the image and likeness of God, reflects this wide-awakeness perpetually. Man, awake to the beauty of holiness, expresses and enjoys that which is good, the grandeus of being. The harmony which characterizes the divine Mind is being continually felt and enjoyed by the real man.

In human experience, however, we awaken gradually to these facts, which are made clear through the revelation of Christian Science. Mrs. Eddy sums up the situation as it appears in material sense, when she writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 95), "Lulled by stupefying illusions, the world is asleep in the cradle of infancy, dreaming away the hours." The student of Christian Science, awakening to detect the state of mortal thought, sees the need of being aroused from this lethargy. As one is stirred by Truth out of the mortal, material sense of things, one manifests and enjoys the alertness and activity of spiritual being. The Bible gives helpful counsel in this connection. More than once the prophet Isaiah utters the rousing call, "Awake, awake."

Jacob, having left his home to live with his kinsman, Laban, rested one night at Bethel. Here, on his stony pillow, he had that dream wherein he beheld angels ascending and descending—pure thoughts active in consciousness. What is referred to in the Scriptural narrative as a dream was actually a vision of spiritual reality. When he awoke, he said, "Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not." It was more than a physical awakening that Jacob experienced that morning at Bethel. He awoke to a clearer perception of spiritual reality. Thereafter, this vision of Truth was at work in his consciousness, although at times it was apparently obscured by selfish interests. But such is the power of the truth that, once seen, remembrance of the vision will not down. So Jacob had further awakenings, until at the ford Jabbok he gained a clearer vision of man as God's image, and received his new name, which expressed his spiritual selfhood, that is, Israel.

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