Article October 2, 1943 Issue

Isolation Overcome

GRACE E. GLEASON

When Saul of Tarsus started upon the momentous journey to Damascus, as recorded in the ninth chapter of Acts, he was plainly unconscious of the binding isolation that Pharisaical intolerance and the prideful exclusiveness of caste had imposed upon him. As he journeyed, the revelation of the Christ came to him with such startling suddenness that a sharp realization of his blindness to the things of Spirit overpowered him until, sightless, groping in darkness, he was healed by Ananias and awakened to spiritual vision.

This same spiritual quickening must have marked the beginning of his conscious expression of the qualities of compassion, tolerance, and wide-visioned comprehension of human needs, which made Paul the Apostle of the Gentiles. In short, the Christ, Truth, demanded that the mental outlook be not only deep and clear, but wide and free, in the measure of an all-embracing compassion. So compelling and expansive was this vision that in his later experience Paul wrote in his epistle to Timothy: "I exhort, therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men ... for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth."

The experience of Paul may seem so remote in Christian history that its vital meaning to the life of the individual Christian Scientist is missed. Like Paul, we have been spiritually awakened and healed by the Christ. Truth; but do we realize that, like the early apostle, we must obey the imperative injunction of the master Christian, Christ Jesus, to go out "into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature"?

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