CLIMBING THE LADDER

HON. CLARENCE A. BUSKIRK

The ladder which every worthy student of Christian Science is earnestly and perseveringly trying to climb, has its foot resting upon the earth, but its top seems to be beyond our mortal vision. We ascend this ladder through the medium of spiritual thought, and many of us are able to climb it a little way with comparative ease. Indeed, it is a delightful novelty to get our feet off the ground, where ofttimes they have grown weary and discontent. Especially is this the case when the ladder rests upon some spot which is disagreeable to us, or even repulsive; but if the ladder has its foot in some pleasant place, where the flowers bloom and the grass grows and the birds come to sing, many of us linger there year after year, until some sharp-toothed anguish of mind or body compels us to mount the waiting ladder. It happens that the most delightful places on earth have their occasional evil sights and sounds, and after it has been learned that they can be escaped by climbing above them, the experience is never again forgotten.

There is a sense in which we often have to descend this ladder to attend to our daily duties. Even our thoughts frequently need to walk the earth, and sometimes in dusty and muddy places; but they do this much better, and with happier freedom, after they have climbed away from it all, even if for only a few minutes, for the vitalizing purity of a higher atmosphere attends them, nobler influences invigorate the consciousness, and the mud and dust are not so hard to endure as otherwise. Besides, the ladder is always ready for us to climb; and the oftener we ascend it the easier we find it, so that, instead of fatiguing, the climb refreshes and strengthens us more and more.

In our first experiences many of us are so transported with joy over our escape from some torturing thing below, and so enthusiastic at finding that the instrument of our deliverance is so strong and firm, and so adequate that it can never be crowded, that we want all to accept our report to be true and to follow at once. This is right, and our grateful testimony ought never to be silenced, however received; but the mistake made by many of us, until we have learned better, is to get impatient or discouraged because our glad evidence passes largely unheard and unheeded. We need to remember that the full ear does not appear on the first day that the seed is planted, nor even the day after. We all need, too, whether ready to welcome them or not, some heavenward influences in our lives, and without them we are sure to retrogress toward brutishness in its lower states. With them, however, we may develop something so aspiring and ethereal, so bright and uplifting in its qualities, that we shall no longer ask ourselves, in the words of the old English poet Donne,

Why should our clay
Over our spirits so much sway?

Not many men and women, in their best estate, are willing that only clayey associations and influences shall absorb and dominate all the days and nights of their brief pilgrimage on this planet. Consciously or unconsciously, they long for something purer, sweeter, higher. This is because man's true selfhood is heaven-born and not earth-born; therefore the mortal sense of existence is but a belief in temporary exile from a fairer sphere. If man were earth-born, would he not be content with earth? would history's page show, would our own hearts show, that humanity's chief and most potent impulses, as well as its mental perspective and sense of right proportion, have their cradle in its unconquerable and indefatigable aspiration and hope for a higher and nobler existence? Is it not here that the dynamics of all religion is to be found? Are not these the basic tendencies which have saved our race from bestiality?

The divine fact recorded in many instances on the pages of the Old Testament, shown in the science of the teachings and works of Jesus, and in the profound dissertation thereon by Mrs. Eddy, verified by the highest human evidence,—this fact is irreconcilable with any other view. This divine fact also shows that we are bettered, physically as well as otherwise, as our thoughts ascend the ladder that takes us away from the gray fogs of earth into a more radiant and inspiring atmosphere. We walk the earth with a firmer and surer step after such excursions, and the higher we climb the more invigorating are the effects upon us. Thus drawing nearer to divine Love day by day, our steps grow ever surer, and no matter how many or high the rounds that await us, we mount upward in supreme confidence that a fairer, purer realm awaits us at the end.

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