Article April 15, 1950 Issue

TRUE DELIVERANCE

EVANGELINE PAXTON

Although centuries have passed since Jacob's deliverance, as told in the Bible in Genesis, men often find themselves face to face with the same kind of problem and discover the solution is always the same. The revelator of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, writes of Jacob's triumph in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 308), "Jacob was alone, wrestling with error,— struggling with a mortal sense of life, substance, and intelligence as existent in matter with its false pleasures and pains,—when an angel, a message from Truth and Love, appeared to him and smote the sinew, or strength, of his error, till he saw its unreality." And she continues farther on, "But the patriarch, perceiving his error and his need of help, did not loosen his hold upon this glorious light until his nature was transformed."

How often we pray to be delivered before the error is seen and repented of; but we should not desire to let an experience go until it blesses us. Jacob, alone, prayed earnestly for deliverance from his brother Esau, whom he had wronged. Deliverance, without regeneration, from some Esau is not progress. The result of Jacob's prayer that starlit night was the uncovering of his own self-will, duplicity, and instability. He discerned the errors in his own consciousness, and, more important still, he was ready to correct them. No longer was he trying to pacify error, to placate a mortal, to escape the revenge of an enemy, because he now recognized the enemy to be the material beliefs he had accepted into his own thought. Perceiving the face or nature of God, Jacob saw the real man, reflecting the pure qualities of Spirit. No wonder he could say to Esau when he fearlessly met him the next morning, "I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God, and thou wast pleased with me" (Gen. 33:10). As we struggle for victory over error, let us be sure that our thinking or nature is changed, even as Jacob's was changed, that we may show forth what we really are, the glorious expression of Mind.

In rebuking sin, let us do it as Jesus did, fortified with the knowledge that the real man is spiritual in origin and nature, incapable of expressing or experiencing the effects of mortal beliefs. Mrs. Eddy tells us (Miscellaneous Writings, p.109): "The knowledge of evil that brings on repentance is the most hopeful stage of mortal mentality. Even a mild mistake must be seen as a mistake, in order to be corrected; how much more, then, should one's sins be seen and repented of, before they can be reduced to their native nothingness!"

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