Article January 26, 1946 Issue

The Glory That Transcends Gloom

JUDITH SOMERS COCKS

To spiritual sense the sunshine of Life and Love is ever visible. To material sense, however, the mental heavens are overcast and the night comes; the self-pitying mortal often cries. "I have constant trials, one after another!" The way to banish, this gloom of human thought is found in Christian Science. Through an understanding of its teachings the student learns to replace material evidence with spiritual. When this is faithfully done, the mental atmosphere changes. Gloom gives way to the glory of inextinguishable spiritual light.

Mary Baker Eddy in her writings sometimes associates the words "gloom" and "glory." In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" she says (pp. 47, 48): "During his night of gloom and glory in the garden, Jesus realized the utter error of a belief in any possible material intelligence. The pangs of neglect and the staves of bigoted ignorance smote him sorely. His students slept, he said unto them: 'Could ye not watch with me one hour?' Could they not watch with him who, waiting and struggling in voiceless agony, held uncomplaining guard over a world? There was no response to that human yearning, and so Jesus turned forever away from earth to heaven, from sense to Soul."

Earth's agony—persecutions, desertion by friends, pain, apparent defeat, which is sometimes merely a temporary lack of vision —must be surmounted by spiritual understanding. In times of trial the student of Christian Science realizes the eternal, uninterrupted activity of the law of God, producing harmony and annulling the false claims of error. He steadfastly maintains his stand for man's harmonious being until suffering is overcome by Truth and material sense disappears before spiritual sense.

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