Editorial November 14, 1908 Issue

SELF-DISCOVERY

John B. Willis

Nothing could be more dramatic, more appealing to the imagination, than the circumstances of that early morning hour when the land-birds first fluttered about his little caravels, and peering through the enveloping haze the brave Genoese caught his first glimpse of a new world. He had reached, as he thought, the consummation of his lifelong struggle, and though his expectations of gain and glory were no doubt large, how meagerly they measured the significance of that morning's incident to all the world. It was the long-hoped-for moment of discovery, a moment whose anticipated joys have ever stimulated men to heroic sacrifice and patient toil.

All of us have known something of the enlivening interest that attaches to any pursuit in which one is momentarily liable to come upon some new and greatly desired object or experience,—something of the zest which has ever given impulse to the world's explorers, and which begets in unnumbered truth-seekers to-day the enthusiasm with which they are ever making sallies into that realm of the unknown which lies all about us, and which stretches beyond the farthest star. The quests to which men are committed are many, but none of them may be compared with that commended by Cervantes when he said, "Make it thy business to know thyself." Here every true "find" is a treasure above rubies, and it becomes an eternal possession.

When we remember Jesus' words, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." we may acquire some sense of the depth and vastness of the significance of this self-discovery, the compassing of man, the "image and likeness of God." Christian theology has not helped, but rather hindered mortals in this enterprise, and for the reason that it identifies man with sinning and suffering human sense, thus associating the thought of self-discovery with the effort to make a good thing out of a bad! The manifest hopelessness of this task has always paralyzed endeavor, and thus led men to wait for death to bring them, on the instant, as they have been led to believe, the realization of their spiritual nature and dominion. It has thus come about that one of the world's greatest sicknesses is this, that men have so little knowledge of man; and Christian Science has come to heal this fateful ill. It has come to tell men again the inspiring and redemptive truth told them so long ago,—that man is perfect and unfallen, the immediate and abiding expression of the wisdom and love and beauty of the divine nature, and that this true selfhood may be attained, its native sovereignty over sickness and sin demonstrated, as we waken from the mesmerism of mortal sense.

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