Transformation

WE read a sad lesson from a little incident related of Leonardo Da Vinci's painting of his famous Last Supper.

The great artist searched curiously for many days among the passers in the crowded streets for a face good and pure and sweet enough to serve as a model for the Saviour.

At last he found one, classic in feature, refined in expression, spiritual in suggestion, and he painted his wonderful Christ.

Years passed, the great masterpiece, still unfinished, lacked one face, that of Judas.

Again Leonardo sought long for a model, this time, it must be a type of depravity, and at last, on the streets of Milan, he met a wretched beggar,—ragged, unclean, debauched, he looked a very Judas. When the twelfth apostle was finished the artist found this model to be the same that had posed for his Jesus! The same? Ah no! The intervening years had been spent in riotous living and they had left their impress upon the once beautiful face.

We turn from the sad story with fervent gratitude that through divine revelation there has come the reversal of this law of retrogression, and all the entailed experiences which have led to the despairing cry, "Every human life is a tragedy."

A listening ear has caught the word of Truth, a loyal, loving heart has answered the appeal of sin-burdened humanity, and in unnumbered faces which once suggested the kinship of Judas, there is now seen the light of purity and gladness.

Through Christian Science God is revealing Himself as Love, and only Love; and we know that the divine idea cannot be despoiled by sin. We are learning to find, despite error's distortion, only the face of the Christ in the passing crowd, in the dingy shop, in the home, in the schoolroom, everywhere. We are beginning to know that the Judas of false belief is not a guest at the "morning meal which Christian Scientists commemorate" (Science and Health, p. 35). the spiritual communion where the apostles now gather to break the bread of Life and drink the wine of Love.

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