Article June 25, 1955 Issue

SPIRITUAL AWAKENING

DORIS M. SMITH

Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (pp. 306, 307), "The parent of all human discord was the Adam-dream, the deep sleep, in which originated the delusion that life and intelligence proceeded from and passed into matter." From these words and also from other passages in the writings of our beloved Leader, we learn that mortal existence is a dream of being born into matter, a dream of error—of sickness, pain, sin, lack, sorrow, death—a dream of discord.

We escape from this discord and attain health, harmony, and a true sense of life by spiritually awakening from the false or material sense of existence. This awakening is attained by gaining spiritual understanding. Christ, God's spiritual idea, alone can break the mortal dream. Paul must have glimpsed this, for he wrote to the Ephesians (5:14), "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." Paul spoke from experience, because the light of the Christ had awakened him from the darkness of ignorance and mistaken zeal. Through his acceptance of the message of the Christ and the spiritualization of his thought, he was completely changed and reformed.

Jesus was so spiritually-minded that he was always conscious of his spiritual identity, his true selfhood, the Christ. The Master was not deceived by the false evidence of the five material senses, the mortal dream. He knew that Life is not in matter, and therefore that Life cannot pass out of matter. His spiritual understanding of God and man, Life and Life's expression, enabled Christ Jesus to overcome every problem presented to him. He healed the sick and reformed the sinner and he raised the dead, as in the case of Lazarus of Bethany, of whom Jesus said (John 11:11), "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep." And he did so, for Lazarus was awakened from the dream, the illusion, of death and restored to life.

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