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"?

Obviously this command is a spiritual requirement. How shall we understand and obey it? The answer to this question is of the utmost importance to the Christian Science movement and to every Christian Scientist.

If our application of the truth results in safeguarding the children's health, establishing security of employment for adult members of the family, or in otherwise serving our individual interests, is this enough? This is good, but far, far from enough. Perhaps we are faithfully serving on the distribution committee, in the Sunday school, as an usher, or in some other activity of our branch church. Such service is very good, but still not enough. We may even be meeting with deep consecration the needs of patients who come to us for comfort and healing. This is essential and good, but even this is not enough, unless our daily work is embracing consideration of the needs of all humanity. Mrs. Eddy writes (No and Yes, p. 39), "True prayer is not asking God for love; it is learning to love, and to include all mankind in one affection."

Christian Scientists must keep abreast of the present needs of this stress-filled world. When we consider the unselfed service of those in the armed forces, who stand ready to defend with their lives our freedom and our welfare, can we do less than offer frequently the prayer that demonstrates God's omnipresent protection? Our thought should reach out to the millions oppressed, and perhaps despairing, who need so urgently to know the comfort of God's all-presence, which can come to them through our steadfast realization of the irresistibility of Love, the invincibility of Spirit, and the inevitable victory of Truth.

We may be learning geography the hard way, but even so we are finding that our brother man in China, in Australia, in Africa, and in the islands of the sea has the same inherent love of freedom and decency, the same unselfed devotion to ideals that we have; and in this discovery we perceive the universal reaching towards Spirit that we can support and strengthen through righteous prayer. As sleepy provincialism and smug national isolation give way to the concept of global unity and brotherhood, to establish international peace and world-wide co-operation, we as Christian Scientists must be in the forefront of the spiritual activity that alone can make such conditions of human life possible and permanent.

We cannot afford to fail to participate in the world-embracing prayer and application of the truth which will prepare for the establishment on earth of the true concept of God and the universal brotherhood of man as expressed on pages 576 and 577 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." where Mrs. Eddy writes. "This human sense of Deity yields to the divine sense, even as the material sense of personality yields to the incorporeal sense of God and man as the infinite Principle and infinite idea,—as one Father with His universal family, held in the gospel of Love."