Extracts from The Second Coming of Christ FRANK H. SPRAGUE          We may well imagine his hearers' astonishment when he whom they had learned to know as "The Prince of Peace" associated the coming of the Christ with scenes of turbulence and disaster of the most terrible description. What logical connection could there be between occurrences so diametrically opposite in their nature?          . . . In this drama of unreality the material belief of tranquillity passes for true peace, which is spiritual, until corporeal sense, urged to the limit of self-deception by the judgment of Truth, experiences a reaction in the aggravation of peace disturbing beliefs.          Metaphysically understood, "the end of the world," or "the consummation of the age" (Revised Version, marginal rendering), signifies the passing of this suppositional, false concept of existence and all that it implies in the way of a material environment. . . .          Because he is so drugged with the beliefs of ignorance and apathy mortal man does not realize the necessity of escaping from the mesmerism of the senses until the situation becomes intolerable. It sometimes requires a terrific shock to rouse the dreamer to the point where he cries out in sheer desperation, "What must I do to be saved?" In many instances a tragedy of the senses is the means of stripping off the mask of material illusions most unexpectedly and bringing mortals face to face with the spiritual facts of being. . . .          Never has mortal mind experienced such a general and thorough shaking up as is taking place today, and never before have channels for the word of Truth opened up with such amazing rapidity and in such unforeseen directions. The traditional order is suffering radical changes, and material calculations are being upset at every turn. The very belief of material law and order which has served to give a degree of stability to human concepts and institutions is beginning to disclose its inherent lawlessness and disorderliness in sinister ways. The suppositional forces of mortal mind are passing beyond the bounds of self-control and restraint and spending their counterfeit potentialities in self-annihilation. The inwardness of the fleshly mind is coming out in diabolical exhibitions of hate, cruelty, treachery, sensuality, as Truth brings latent forms of evil to the surface and compels error to show its hand. "Wars and rumors of wars" bear witness to the chaos of sensuous beliefs as the spiritual issue is forced upon mankind.          Mrs. Eddy says: "The breaking up of material beliefs may seem to be famine and pestilence, want and woe, sin, sickness, and death, which assume new phases until their nothingness appears. These disturbances will continue until the end of error, when all discord will be swallowed up in spiritual Truth." (Science and Health, p. 96) In this crisis the student whose thought has been instructed in the letter of Christian Science and who has grasped something of its spirit, is prepared, like the five wise virgins in the parable, for the coming of the bridegroom; while the individual who is engrossed in the pursuit of sense-illusions is all at sea and at the mercy of crumbling beliefs. As in "the days of Noe," the reaction comes as a thunderbolt to the unprepared world of the senses, intoxicated with the lusts of the flesh, "eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage."   Extracts from "The Second Coming of Christ" by Frank H. Sprague Christian Science Sentinel, June 23, 1917

 

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