Article June 10, 1911 Issue

VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE

HELEN R. PLATT.

In Romans, St. Paul says, "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made." We learn in demonstration that every effect has a mental origin or causation, and that things visible to this mortal vision may symbolize things that are invisible to this human sight. We get a chain of beautiful thoughts from David in the Nineteenth Psalm: "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork." Whoever has traced the stars in their courses, noted the phases of the moon, studied the rising and setting of the sun, or trusted the seasons to come and go in their regular order, finds with proper study that each and all of this points to that invisible intelligence, the creator of the one creation. As we expand in thought and become more and more receptive, we discover new beauties and interests, thus receiving all we are ready to receive or have prepared ourselves to be capable of receiving, the world unfolding to us a grandeur and glory out of what was to us formerly emptiness or chaos.

In "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 331) Mrs. Eddy very beautifully expresses her thought in these words: "As mortals awake from their dream of material sensation, this adorable, all-inclusive God, and all earth's hieroglyphics of Love, are understood; and infinite Mind is seen kindling the stars, rolling the worlds, reflecting all space and Life,—but not life in matter." We certainly get glimpses of the promise by seeing the beauty of human existence, in the same way that if we know and love our brother whom we have seen, we become more capable of knowing and loving God whom we have not seen. The world is only to us what we are conscious of, and often becomes one vast whispering gallery, though but a vacuum to the inattentive and heedless.

The artist must first feel and see mentally all that he would give to the public gaze upon his canvas, must absorb and study both consciously and unconsciously, voluntarily and involuntarily, all phases and conditions of his subject, until his whole being is filled to overflowing. Before he takes up pencil and brush his conception is matured, his work is done, and now his hands obey his will, the invisible is understood by that which is made. Likewise the sculptor masters first in thought every statue or monument by an indwelling communion with all the invisible beauties of his ideal, before he can or does eventually make the visible manifestation with tools that do his bidding, giving to the world the carved marble that glows with the inspiration of his genius. In "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 86) Mrs. Eddy tells us that "even the human conception of beauty, grandeur, and utility is something that defies a sneer. It is more than imagination. It is next to divine beauty and the grandeur of Spirit. It lives with our earth-life, and is the subjective state of high thoughts."

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