Article June 22, 1912 Issue

LIMITATION

SAMUEL GREENWOOD.

The way we look at things is largely responsible for the courage or the fear, the confidence or the doubt, with which we meet the demands or the difficulties that arise in human experience; hence to have the right point of view is an essential factor in working out one's problems. Elisha, beset by the Syrians in Dothan, knew that the chariots of divine help surrounded him, and he was therefore undismayed at the presence or the number of his enemies; while his servant, seeing only the material side,—their own apparent weakness and the encircling host of foes,—was afraid. When the prophet caused the young man to look from the spiritual point of view, and he realized the presence of God, his fear of the threatening evil departed.

We are all too prone to be influenced by the appearance of things, to count the number of persons as representing the strength or weakness of a cause, forgetting that "one on God's side is a majority." Even the Master's disciples were deceived by the material evidence when they counted the loaves and fishes and said, "But what are they among so many?" They looked from the point of view of limited sense, not of infinity; therefore they could not see as did Jesus that God's spiritual supply, the substance of Mind, was there to be used according to the need. Neither was it divine wisdom, but human reliance upon material strength, which prompted the numbering of the Israelites; and the greater the number of personal units the less apparent seemed the necessity to trust in God; hence the sin, and its self-punishment, of looking to the human and personal instead of to the divine source of good for one's strength and defense.

Personal sense, not discerning the infinite nature and resources of being, limits itself in every direction. The student, looking from this point of view and seeing only his own shortcomings, fears that his understanding is too small to work out his problems or to meet Truth's spiritual demand. Thus a little band of workers, looking at the fewness of their numbers and the seeming largeness of the demand, may lack the courage to go forward in the assurance of God's unfailing supply. On every hand is the temptation to look to personality instead of to infinite, divine Principle, which is ever supplying the smallest as well as the greatest need of its ideas; and this turning from Principle to person is the error that prevents the recognition of man's boundless possibilities and resources.

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