Article August 23, 1947 Issue

THE TRANSFORMING POWER OF SPIRIT

DOROTHY EILEEN HEYWOOD-DOVE

If you would make one supreme effort to reform the world, reform yourself," counseled a well-known lecturer. To the student of present-day needs there is great encouragement in this simple advice to look within if we would solve humanity's problems. To learn to keep a vigilant watch over false tendencies by guarding thought against all that is unlovely or burdensome is a task at hand, an immediate opportunity.

He who studies the lifework of Jesus of Nazareth becomes aware that he exercised a power, a spiritual ascendancy, which transformed human experience. His discernment of reality enabled him quickly to detect and reject that which did not measure up to the divine standard. It was Jesus' spiritual understanding dominating his character which enabled him to perform his mission and made his influence on human history immortal. He exhibited an apartness from and a dominion over human circumstances; so-called laws of nature, worn-out traditions, and material limitations were set aside by him who moved calmly and steadily forward on the road of spiritual victories to his own resurrection or victory over death, and then to his complete ascension above matter and its conditions.

Jesus' life blessed all who came willingly and humbly within the radius of his teaching, and it furnishes a model for all who desire that their human life may be transfigured and exalted. "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God" (Rom. 12:2). Here is profound and far-reaching admonition from Paul, whose life bore witness to the transforming power of Truth.

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