7. Whitsuntide: A Whitsuntide Reflection

In the deeper sense of the word Whitsuntide may be characterised by a looking in spirit back to the past and yet on towards the future. The significance of the Festival for the nations of the West stands out before us in a stupendous scene, which appeals to the deepest feelings of our nature. The scene is familiar to every one here present. After the accomplishment of the Mystery of Golgotha, the Founder of Christianity lingers awhile among those who are able to see Him in that body which He used after the Mystery, and the further succession of events is placed before our souls in an impressive series of pictures. The body which the Founder of Christianity took after the Mystery of Golgotha, dissolves visibly, and is revealed to His most intimate disciples in the mighty vision known to us as the Ascension and ten days later there follows that which is now to be shown us in a picture, speaking a language which goes to the very hearts of all willing to understand it. The disciples of Christ are assembled; those who first understood Him are gathered together. Profoundly they feel the mighty impulse which has entered through Him into the evolution of mankind and their souls anxiously await the fulfilment of the promise made to them, of events which should be accomplished in their own souls. Gathered together in deep fervour of spirit are these first disciples and followers of the Christ-Impulse on the day, time-honoured in their land, of the Feast of Pentecost. Their souls are raised to a loftier perception; they are called upon, as it were, by a ‘rushing mighty wind,’ to direct their powers of observation to that which should come, to that which awaited them when, reborn again and again with that fiery impulse which they had received into their hearts, they should live on this Earth of ours. Before our souls there rises a picture of the ‘fiery tongues’ as they descend on the head of each disciple and a new and mighty vision appears to those present, in which they see what the future of this impulse will be.