Editorial October 10, 1942 Issue

The New Tongue

Evelyn F. Heywood

On page 7 of "Christian Healing," Mary Baker Eddy, referring to the new tongue, writes, "It is the language of Soul instead of the senses; it translates matter into its original language, which is Mind, and gives the spiritual instead of the material signification." How gracious, how eloquent, how transforming, was the new tongue, as borne witness to by Jesus; what joy and strength it brought to all those who heard and in their turn learned to speak it! When men listened to him they knew, even though some might deny it, might rebel at it, that this was the new tongue, this was the language of Soul. Never, it was admitted, had man been heard to speak as he spake. And when he addressed disease and sin, men were healed, redeemed, uplifted.

To hear and then obey the new tongue is to understand the true meaning of prayer; it is to take no forward step, to contemplate no undertaking which is not based on divine wisdom and actuated by divine Love. To accept Truth alone as his ideal, and to determine to live it at all times, makes great demands upon the individual. It calls for alertness in thought and speech; it calls for humility and obedience; it necessitates the laying down of personal sense with its boasting, its pride, its self-depreciations, the laying aside of all humanly governing desires with their undermining weaknesses and self-indulgences. The new tongue voices no subterfuge, no prevarications; it speaks only to bless, whether in rebuke or praise, in denial of error, in appreciation of Truth.

The promise which their Master had given his disciples in his last interview with them before he ascended, that they would speak with new tongues, was symbolized with dramatic effect on the day of Pentecost. This was but the outward evidence of what had been going on in their hearts and lives since they first began to understand that what he spake and what they heard were the words not of matter but of Spirit, not of human reasoning, but of divine knowing. And now in their turn they learned after his farewell benediction that when they told the lame to rise up and walk, they walked; the blind to see, the sick to be well, the imprisoned to be free, the signs did follow. Words were fraught with spiritual significance, and the outcome was the reshaping, the redeeming of men's lives.

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