“Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness: let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together; I the Lord have created it” (Isaiah 45:8).
Here Isaiah presents a mighty picture of Spirit rending the heavens to rain down its gifts upon a receptive earth.
With regard to Mrs. Eddy’s discovery, the earth-realm was not in a position of openness to receive it until after the American Revolution and the Civil War. The colonists of the Revolution were the first people in history to question the divine right of kings and, with God’s help, banished tyranny from without. And with the Civil War came the end of slavery, banishing tyranny from within. It would have been impossible for both wars to have been fought simultaneously. Liberty advances by footsteps.
Then, in 1866, almost immediately after the end of the Civil War, the heavens were set free to open, at last, to fall on good ground: a softened, more accessible earth after a drought of nearly two thousand years of drab, secularized Christianity emptied, for the most part, of what Paul called “demonstration of the Spirit and power” (I Cor. 2:4). And such an important, liberating step it was! “The voice of God in behalf of the African slave was still echoing in our land, when the voice of the herald of this new crusade sounded the keynote of universal freedom, asking a fuller acknowledgment of the rights of man as a Son of God…” (SH 226:5-13).
But earth is now once again faced with enemies seeking to harden it against absorbing anything falling from heaven, as forces of despotism are working vehemently to impede, halt, or reverse the progress of liberty’s footsteps.
Therefore, I will keep Isaiah 45:8 close by for watching, praying, arguing to neutralize each of error’s unrelenting efforts to negate “the Word, Christ, Christianity, and divine Science” (SH 575:17-20).