Article August 27, 1910 Issue

THE OPEN VISION

HELEN HARTWELL BAKER

From earliest childhood, that is, after I was old enough to wonder about things which I read or heard, I was greatly impressed by a statement in the third chapter of the first book of Samuel: "There was no open vision." I used to try to puzzle the meaning of it out in my small head, and once I heard a sermon on that subject, but it did not satisfy my craving to solve the mystery which enshrouded it, for to my childish sense one's vision must necessarily be open—if one's eyes were open.

As I grew older, I often wondered about that verse; and as time went on, I began to realize somewhat of its meaning. I could not believe,—I could not think things out. For several years I was an invalid, away from home and friends, and to me "there was no open vision." Yet I clung to the remnant of faith which I had always had,—that things would all come right somehow, or else they would not; and whichever way it was, it would be all right,—a sort of Stoic philosophy which kept me very cheerful. Still, I knew I was not satisfied, and I was always reaching out for something more,—that open vision which ought to be but was not.

Then Christian Science came into my life, and I began to see light, very slowly and with many seeming eclipses, but at last I found that where the open vision begins, one cannot become blinded by a return of false beliefs. On a recent railway journey I had a sudden opening of my mental vision to the wonderful symbolism which is all about us. The train had been running up a long steep grade between high, rocky walls and with a cloudy sky hanging over us—when suddenly we shot out of our rocky frame into a smooth upland, and outspread before us lay a wonderfully beautiful landscape of gently rolling hills and a tiny river.

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