Article March 4, 1950 Issue

GETTING THE SECOND WIND

ADAM A. HILLEBRAND

An experienced long-distance runner knows that if he conquers an acute sense of fatigue in the early stages of a long-distance race, he can go on for many more minutes and finally finish the race. The overcoming of that sudden feeling of exhaustion is called in athletic circles "getting the second wind."

This may serve as a helpful illustration to any student of Christian Science. The awakening of an individual from a false, material sense of existence with its fears, disappointments, pains, and sorrows to the recognition of a spiritual sense of Life, where health, holiness, joy, satisfaction, peace, freedom, and immortality are everlastingly established, is in many instances a sudden one. The illumination of one's consciousness with the spiritual facts of Life may be likened to the overwhelming influx of Christ, or Truth, in the minds of Jesus' disciples in the early days of Christianity, on the Pentecostal Day in Jerusalem. It may lift one to a sudden overwhelming vision of the realm of the real. It may for a time carry one measurably above the material sense of things.

This may be the way of someone's entrance in the race for spiritual liberation, when Christian Science first comes into his life. In many instances instantaneous healings have followed these experiences. But if, some time later, the student is confronted with the subtle beliefs of indifference or apathy, discouragement or despair; or if error, through some stubborn form of suffering or sin, would try to force of him out of the race he so enthusiastically entered in the beginning, then moral courage, coupled with inspiration and spiritual joy, is needed to cast out these hypnotic suggestions of the carnal mind. Facing and overcoming these foes fearlessly, he will gain his "second wind" and thereby be inspired to keep in the race. One's progress toward the desired goal will then be steady and unobstructed, until he finally reaches his ultimate goal, the attainment of eternal life.

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