"Awake thou"

John B. Willis

There are few passages of Scripture that are richer in intimations than the word of the Lord spoken by Isaiah, saying, "Come now, and let us reason together." Were one man to say to another, "Come, let us consider this matter," we should at once understand several things, to wit, that the speaker recognized a difference in point of view; that he respected the intelligence of the one addressed; that he had analyzed and apprenhended the subject in question to his own satisfaction; that he felt sure an agreement could be arrived at if all the facts were but calmly considered, and that he made his appeal with the hope and expectation that unity of thought and action would be reached through the exercise of a common intelligence.

And now do not these words uttered by the prophet mean all this? In them are not you and I asked to put to use a present capacity to get at the root of our problems and solve them by knowing the truth, the law of our being, as it is embraced in the divine consciousness? This is the contention of Christian Science, and what an inspring stimulus to thought! That the attitude of divine Love revealed in the prophet's words is constant, is more clearly indicated perhaps in that remarkable passage in Revelation which reads, "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock"! Think of it! The divine intelligence patiently waiting for the welcome which will make it possible to impart to us its riches! The entire "wisdom literature" of the Old Testament represents God as thus appealing for recognition at the door of human consciousness, and this gives one a better understanding of the meaning of Mrs. Eddy's demand for "a fuller acknowledgment of the rights of man as a Son of God" (Science and Health, p. 226).

When we individually compass the deeper significance of the divine appeal that we "reason together" with God, infinite Truth, the exalted possibilities and privileges pertaining to our spiritual selfhood appear, and we gain a new sense of man's dignity and of the incongruity of any identification with or consent to the selfishness and sensuality, the pride and pettiness, the ignorance and ignobility of material sense.

Christ Jesus constantly addressed himself to logical thought, and in entire keeping therewith Christian Science teaches that Christian character means quickened intelligence as well as redeemed affection; that salvation is an entirely explicable fact and process; that it is an awaking to demonstrable truth, a passing from the mental darkness of materiality into the light of spiritual understanding. Says St. Paul, "God hath not given us the spirit of fear," which is always an exhibition of ignorance, but rather the spirit "of a sound mind." Redemptive experience is not to be identified with an ecstatic emotionalism, nor yet with the mere effort to be good, though both deep feeling and continuous consecration pertain to it.

Though common thought has so generally associated cleverness with evil, intelligence is not a peril to true piety. John Erskine is wholly right when he says that any system of ethics is vicious in so far as it renders us indifferent to the moral obligation to be intelligent. Christlikeness means Christ-mindedness, and this is the only genuine goodness, though an infinite amount of well-intentioned stupidity has passed current therefor.

Christian Science is a summons to wake up. In stentorian tones it is crying in all the world today, "The time for thinkers has come. . . . Ignorance of God" is not "the steppingstone to faith" (Science and Health, Pref., p. vii). It declares that any kind or degree of ignorance is illegitimate; that mental lethargy, the mesmerism of unthinking belief, is our subtlest enemy, and that the initial step of spiritual ascent is the realization that to be is to know. This taken, one's footstep is firm, his gaze straight on and upward.

John B. Willis.

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