Editorial June 1, 1907 Issue

"I WILL LIFT UP MINE EYES."

John B. Willis

No aspect of mortal sense is more familiar, more intrusive, or more pitiful than that pettiness which finds expression in so much of human judgment and conduct. The selfishness that clings to its end seat, regardless, the habit of persistent fault-finding, the exhibition of ill-temper over trifling inconveniences, the disposition to speak disparagingly of competitors, the indulgence of little pretense, subterfuge, and acted dihonesties, the failure to distinguish between essentials and incidentals, the unwillingness to look at matters in a broad, all-round way,—how all these and kindred things speak for the narrowness that so needs to be saved from its miserable self.

To those who are dominated in any degree by ungracious, unblessed, and unhappy mortal sense. Christian Science appeals in the words of the prophets of old: Lift thine eyes, O lift thine eyes! It points to that vision of God and of man in His image which expands and inspires thought, and which begets both aptitude and enthusiasm for good, the impulse of all true greatness. Christ Jesus was ever calling the people away from their stunted, self-centered, and material sense of things, ever emphasizing for them the greatness and splendor of God, and the exaltation of man, His child. He tried to show them that apart from spiritual perception judgment is inevitably superficial and distorted, and he sought day by day to establish for them that spiritual perspective which is absolutely essential to the true understanding and estimate of things. Thus he said, "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is you Father, which is in heaven." The recognition of the inspiring facts of being was to be brought into practical relation with every thought of self and of others, and prove a constant safeguard against superficiality and misjudgment, an antidote for all the narrowness which grows out of the identification of self with materiality.

St. Paul recognized and honored this teaching of the Master when he said to the early Church, "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. ... Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth;" and the inference is clear that freedom from the narrowness of human sense, the lean littleness by which choice and conduct are so often distinguished, is to be found in yielding our thought to the enlarging and ennobling influence of the divine idea, the realization of the dignity and privilege of man as the manifestation of "the glory of God." When Christian Scientists remember the emphasis which their Leader has laid upon this thought, the effulgence of the light which has illumined their path, they may well be overwhelmed with a sense of unworthiness and shame when they discover that some of their words and acts are presenting a sad contrast to the concept of the ideal which has been brought to them.

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