Article December 10, 1910 Issue

THINKERS AND SEERS

FRANK H. SPRAGUE

Christian Scientists are sometimes deemed narrow-minded because they are not more hospitable toward differing forms of religious and philosophical belief. So generally has a readiness to study in detail each new human doctrine or theory been accepted as the test of broad-mindedness, that one who holds aloof from such investigation is liable to be thought illiberal, or even fanatical. In order to understand the attitude of Christian Scientists in this respect it is necessary first to consider the requisites of right thinking.

Broadly speaking, truth-seekers are of two types, the thinker and the seer. The thinker may be a student of the profoundest order, a veritable encyclopedia of information and learning; he may be versed in the lore of civilizations ancient and modern; reflect the culture of the important epochs in intellectual, religious, ethical, and esthetic development; keep pace with the advancing thought of the age, and still lack the open vision through which the essential quality or spirit of Truth alone becomes appreciable to human consciousness. "How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" queried the erudite Pharisees concerning the Galilean Prophet. Here we find contrasted the two types, the mere scholar, or thinker, and the seer.

Every age has had its seers, stars of greater or lesser magnitude in the mental and moral firmament. Their inspired utterances have been the source from which the race has drawn its enlightenment and incentive to progress; the fountain-head from which have issued the waters that have nourished the ideals and institutions of an ever-broadening civilization. Mrs. Eddy has referred to this fact when she says: "Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and the prophets caught glorious glimpses of the Messiah, or Christ, which baptized these seers in the divine nature, the essence of Love" (Science and Health, p. 333). The entire world at large has responded, even though unconsciously, to their influence, and yet the scope of prophetic vision has in most cases been limited to imperfect and fragmentary glimpses of fundamental truth. Like a mysterious continent, the shores of which explorers have touched only here and there at random, leaving its territory unsurveyed and unmapped, the Science of being has remained undiscovered, unknown even to the thought which has recognized spiritual reality and experienced in some degree its essential quality. The ancients were familiar with certain features of the earth's surface; but their concepts lacked the continuity, consistency, and completeness which are possible only with the modern understanding of geography as a basis. So has it been with partial views of existence.

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