Article February 18, 1905 Issue

A Mirage

K. B. J.

The expression, "the false testimony of the physical senses," used to puzzle me when I first began to study Christian Science. The dear practitioner, so positive as to that statement, proved it by healing me, through Christian Science, of ailments which had refused to yield to materia medica; but still I did not understand it, until helped by the memory of an unusual phenomenon.

Some years ago, while traveling through western Kansas, the conductor called the attention of his passengers to a mirage,—an unusual thing in that country. We looked out and saw, it seemed half a mile away, a clump of palms, surrounded by a small grassy expanse, suggesting a spring. The country through which we were passing, treeless and barren, was very desolate, but the nodding fronds were more inviting. Every person in the five or six coaches composing the train saw the mirage, saw it for over an hour, and found, upon comparing notes, that they all saw exactly the same thing. Yet there was nothing there to see. The sense of sight said, There is a clump of palms. Reason and geographical knowledge said, There is nothing there, palms do not grow in a country where the thermometer in winter sometimes drops to thirty-five degrees below zero; moreover, this country has all been accurately surveyed by government surveyors, and not a trace of palms was found. Furthermore, we were traveling at thirty miles an hour, and, had there been a clump of trees, we would have passed them even as a town is passed and lost to view, but these palms never changed their seeming position. They appeared to keep pace with the train.

It is with deep personal gratitude that I think of our Leader's unflinching courage, and her consecration to the service of God,—infinite Love,—in arousing us from the nightmare of material illusions and in pointing out to us the way to health and holiness.

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