Editorial January 19, 1957 Issue

SLEEP IS NOT A REMEDY

John J. Selover

"AWAKE thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." Thus Paul in his letter to the Ephesians (5:14) stirred the slumberers of his time. There is no progress, activity, or healing in sleep or dreams. Why then does one look to unconsciousness as a curative agency? Actually our salvation is in watchfulness, alertness, awareness—in keeping awake to the truth of being as presented by Christian Science.

God never slumbers or sleeps. He is ever with us, ever guarding and protecting us, ever willing, able, and ready, as the perfect curative Principle, to destroy pain, cancel sin, and overcome death. God cannot depart from His idea, and His idea cannot depart from God. The seeming separation is in a false assumption that either God or man is a corporeal being or that both are corporeal and therefore separable from each other. Christian Science affirms the inseparability of God and man, of the infinite Father and His beloved son.

In her work "Miscellaneous Writings" Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, asserts (p. 298): "The true consciousness is the true health. One says, 'I find relief from pain in unconscious sleep.' I say, You mistake; through unconsciousness one no more gains freedom from pain than immunity from evil." Until we awaken to the great truth that Life and being are immortal, incorporeal, eternal, spiritual, it will be normal for each individual to rest from his day's occupations. But one should not worship sleep, or count it as a release from pain, a remedy for weariness, or as an escape from vexing, human problems.

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