Editorial April 22, 1911 Issue

THE DIVINE NEARNESS

John B. Willis

We were visiting a normal school, and had observed here and there blackboard sketches which were illustrative of the varied topics of study, and which clearly betrayed the touch of an artist. It was with very great pleasure, therefore, that we came upon the clever craftsman in the midst of a talk to the juniors respecting methods of appeal to the child thought. Crayon in hand, he stood at the board and with a marvel of facility drew the objects and scenes pertaining to his topic,—a leaf, a bird, a mountain range,—glimpses of nature and of life so strikingly true and beautiful that it seemed a wasteful sacrilege when with a swift left-hand stroke he erased them all, save from our delighted remembrance, to make place for yet other exhibits of the richness and versatility of his creative thought.

The expert was disclosing to us the wondrous beauty of artistic conceptions which were wholly unlike and wholly separate from both blackboard and chalk, and we saw again and more clearly how true it is, as Mrs. Eddy has written, that "beauty is a thing of life, which dwells forever in the eternal Mind and reflects the charms of His goodness in expression, form, outline, and color" (Science and Health, p. 247).

Passing out of the schoolroom into the larger world-room whose blue dome was decorated that day with glorious masses of cumuli sketched in light grays and purple browns, we found that while the scene had been shifted, the theme and its appeal remained the same, though enlarged and exalted. It was springtime, and on every panel of vision there was projected some reminder of the one consummate Artist. Every square of earth and sky was speaking to us of that "glorious unseen" which is ever rending the veil of material sense and witnessing to the presence of the realities of Spirit. The apple trees whose daring buds were just blushing into bloom, the stretch of tinted hills that trembled in the exhalations of the warmed earth, the green sward goldened with dandelions, the birds flitting songfully from tree to tree on their home-making projects—on every side a new heaven and new earth were appearing, being discovered by an awakening sense of the immediate presence of Him who "expresses Science and art throughout His creation" (Ibid., p. 507).

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