Article January 22, 1910 Issue

ELISHA'S SERVANT

BLANCHE HERSEY HOGUE.

"Fear not;" answered Elisha to his servant's cry, "Alas, my master! how shall we do?" "Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them." And the narrative continues: "And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha."

The servant of Elisha is not alone in his query "How shall we do?" Human perplexity is ever seeking, ever needing, a way out of trouble, and humanity must change its point of view as did Gehazi if it would discover the help at hand. To the material senses the "hosts of the King of Syria," in the form of temptation and pain and disaster, may sorely beset him who is striving for right. Because Christian Science is in the world, however, to make plain and to establish the spiritual point of view, because it is here to repeat and to spread abroad Christ's glorious "Fear not," heavy eyes may by its means be opened and lifted to see the chariots of the Lord on the mountain-side, and to fear the hosts of evil not at all.

The material senses register only the evidence of matter. Mortals see, hear, feel, taste, and smell matter, in one form or another, continually. On the other hand, all that men know of hope, of love, of aspiration, of unselfishness and goodness, comes to them mentally, from an entirely different source and by an entirely different route than matter offers. Were there no love for righteousness in the world, no affection, no kindly fellowship, mortals could still feel and see and hear and otherwise know matter through the senses which cognize it; and when mortal man wants to know something other than the senses tell him, when he wants to experience things apart from matter,—things spiritual and mental,—he must look away from sense evidence to that which comes to him by the way of spiritual understanding.

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