Article May 18, 1912 Issue

ILLUSTRATION AND EXEMPLIFICATION

ANNE ELIZABETH JENKINS.

One of the difficulties which confront the beginner in Christian Science is that of understanding the relation between God and man. As a rule we are given illustrations to make this relationship clear, just as Jesus through parables taught his followers, and one of the simplest examples that may be cited is that of parent and child.

The practitioner begins to remove from the frightened sense of his patient the concept of a God of wrath who is always punishing His children, and to substitute for this dreadful concept the idea of a God who is Love, who tenderly guards His children from all harm, guides them through green pastures, and sustains them with living waters. The patient is told that God is unconscious of evil in any form, that suffering and punishment go on in human experience only because of human ignorance of God's law, and that suffering ceases as soon as we are willing to obey that law. This is a comforting illustration, for most of us are only big children who love to cling close to our father's hand. But the illustration is by no means perfect, because it is impossible for us to conceive of a child as the perfect reflection of the father. To the mortal sense a child has a mind of its own, a will of its own, a personality distinct and often totally different from that of its parent; therefore the illustration, though helpful to us because it gives us a sense of protection and safety, is only a step toward the perfect understanding of God and man.

The Scientist may speak of the sculptor and his work. The ideal exists in the thought of the sculptor and is expressed in the clay. But this too is faulty as an illustration, because man must express all that God is, and the work of art does not express the intelligence, action, or life of its creator, because it does not think or live.

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