Who does not remember the psalmist's words, "So that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's," and Jesus' illustration, "Harmless as doves"? The Bible repeatedly uses these two birds to express spiritual qualities. The eagle is swift, strong, and graceful, mounts into the sky, and makes its nest on high. Its face denotes piercing keenness of spiritual perception. Nothing escapes the eagle eye. The spiritually minded are sharp-sighted, detecting hidden error and uncovering it as nothing. With beak and talons and beating wings the eagle is formidable to the evildoer. Its extraordinary flight distinguishes it in the bird kingdom. There is no reason why extraordinary accomplishments should not be made by us when there is the inexhaustible power of God and a never ending supply of intelligence to draw upon. We read in Revelation that when the dragon "persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child ... two wings of a great eagle" were given her "that she might fly into the wilderness."

The psalmist also sighed, "Oh that I had wings like a dove!" and we remember that after Jesus' baptism by John "he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him." The dove symbolizes tenderness and peace. Individuals may prefer the dove to the eagle or the eagle to the dove, but the spiritual qualities symbolized by both birds are necessary in bringing men and nations out of bondage into freedom. In righting present world conditions the eagle is making the way straight for the dove of peace, but the unrighteous planner would have had the dove fly on ahead and be pierced by the arrow of hate while carrying the olive branch of peace in its beak. Not so was it decreed in God's plan. There is need for reformation and reparation, for a just acknowledgment of crimes committed and mistakes made, before God's permanent peace can come, with war no more.

So important is the symbol of the dove in Christian literature that Mrs. Eddy has placed a spiritual interpretation of it in the Glossary of the Christian Science textbook (p. 584): "Dove. A symbol of divine Science; purity and peace; hope and faith." These dovelike qualities mark the hour of demonstration; they belong to victory; they come at the close of some great struggle, and are the sign and seal of forgiveness, of error destroyed and absolute Truth enthroned. Who has not in moments of self-surrender, when some long cherished resentment has flown, or some persistent misunderstanding has been cleared up, or some old score settled, heard, metaphysically speaking, the flutter of the dove's gentle wings and felt the touch of its soft feathers? The psalmist understood this, for he wrote, "He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust." Then comes the Sabbath stillness, when the conflict of fear, conceit, and selfishness, against obedience, gratitude, and love is passed and gone; the omnipotent power of the unseen spiritual has put to shame the pretense of material force.

When Noah sent forth a raven from the ark, that bird did not return; but when he sent forth a dove the latter returned, and the second time brought Noah an olive branch as a token of gladness that the waters had receded from the earth. In the metaphysical representation of Spirit coming to the flesh, the warrior-angel Michael may be likened to the eagle, and the peacemaker Gabriel to the dove. The long flight of the eagle, which encounters storms of all descriptions, typifies spiritual endurance. It glides gracefully above the winds, and even rests upon the storm. So Christian Science gives us the wings of spiritual endurance to rise above adverse conditions and have real peace. But an artificial, double-headed eagle, invented by human pride, can only be a malformation. In the dictionary of falsities it stands for a double standard, for the supposition that good and evil are both real, for a mixture of mind and matter, life and death, intelligence and nonintelligence. When admitted to rulership, the double-headed eagle becomes a monstrosity capable of every excess and atrocity.

That birds should be used as spiritual symbols and emblematic devices seems particularly appropriate when we realize that they mount above the more solid forms of matter, such as land and water, into the rarefied air. Thence they can look down upon that which is of the earth, earthy. Just as, seen from above, the earth gives up its secrets, so the sea also becomes transparent, its preying monsters cannot hide themselves from the eyes of the birds which hover and soar, plunge and skim overhead. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 511), "The fowls, which fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven, correspond to aspirations soaring beyond and above corporeality to the understanding of the incorporeal and divine Principle, Love." To the spiritually minded the so-called mystery of evil becomes a sea of glass, made transparent by understanding and love,—a sea which can therefore be placed under foot.

In her notable poem on "The United States to Great Britain," to be found on page 10 of her Poems, Mrs. Eddy brings the qualities of the eagle and the dove together in demonstration of a noble, epoch making reconciliation:—

 William D. McCrackan.