Article February 6, 1909 Issue

NATURE'S PROMISE

BLEECKER LUCE

When I was a boy, though by no means an especially good one, I seemed to drink in unconsciously the beauties of nature portrayed in the mellow sunlight, the glad promise of spring, the fragrant glories of summer, the flaming wealth of autumn: and some especially impressive scenes of nature are indelibly photographed upon the tablets of my memory. Twenty years ago, when well into the meridian of human life, I grasped, from an engulfing sea of despair, at Christian Science, and have been a seeker along that line ever since, with a much greater measure of health and marked moral regeneration as progressing consequences. For about eight years I have been trying to be a consistent Christian Scientist, deeply sensible of my obligation to Mrs. Eddy for her teaching, and earnestly striving for that humble receptivity which will enable me to realize in a fuller measure Truth's glorious promise.

In my experiences as a Christian Scientist I have often noted that the realization of harmony has been accompanied by reccuring glimpses of the stored delights of nature above reffered to, and the success of my realization has usually proven to be worthily measured by these angel visits from memory's heaven. I have frequently alluded to this enjoyable phenomenon, and wondered inconclusively at the implied connection. With maturer development in Christian Science, the explanation seems to come to me with, as I humbly conceive, indications of intuitional clearness. Christian Science teaches that God, good, is All; that the real man (not the mortal misconception usually taken to be man) is His idea, and that like cause, like effect,—as God is, so must the true man be. The inquiry presents itself, both generally and specifically: Where is this true man? Jesus, in the parable of the tares, speaks of the tares and the wheat growing together side by side until the harvest, the final and inevitable separation. So the true and the false concepts of man are thus, to mortal sense, mongled together; first one and then the other speaking, according to the nature of the invoking influence. Hence I, young worldling, and enslaved to materialism though I was, could not escape the blessed consequences of a certain mental alertness. A picture of external harmony would invoke the true harmonious identity from within, upon the obvious rule that like produces or is reflected in like, or according to the beautiful illustration which Mrs. Eddy gives in the spiritual interpretation of the Lord's Prayer, "Love is reflected in love" (Science and Health, p. 17).

I love to realize that man's foundations are ever in God. and that the wealth of the divine unity expressible by man, as God's chosen medium of expression, may be and continually is incited to a true manifestation, notwithstanding the seemingly dense clouds of befogging materiality. I feel impelled to add that there is much in the daily experience of men which suggests the might of Mind. Can we not see that a mighty force struggles for true expression even in the casual promptings of an untutored thought? True thought may well be likened, as we realize the tremendous nature of its power, to the thunderbolt of Jove; and thus in our homely experiences there constantly thunders within us the demand of divine necessity, "Acquaint now thyself with him [God] and be at peace."

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