Article May 17, 1913 Issue

OUR OUTLOOK

ROBERT NALL.

If men were not so inclined to take short views, they would the sooner awake to the wealth of blessings that lie within their reach. A self-imposed limited mental environment is conducive to a hermit condition of existence. Here we are, dwelling in a universe of good, not an iota of which is withheld from God's children when they are ready to receive it; yet all around us there are murmurings of lack, manifested in the evidences of sin and suffering. Men have never ceased to speculate on the causes that operate to produce and maintain this unwholesome condition, but the very speculations themselves are too often based upon false concepts; hence the results have been futile. While mortal man is content to dwell in a microcosm of his own, seeking to do what is an impossibility, that is, to live unto himself, he is blind to all the affluence that a beneficent creator has provided for His children. We may wonder at this, and express surprise that such people are or could be so foolish; but it is well before we pursue that line of thought very far, to ask ourselves whether we are as awake as we might be; whether, in fact, our own short views are not hindering our highest growth and depriving us of Love's richest blessings.

We have but faintly grasped the genius of Christian Science if we have not been led to look from the material to the spiritual for our peace and happiness. In so far as we are doing that now, we are fulfilling life's purpose, and finding that every stage of experience brings with it a clearer perception of spiritual realities and a deeper sense of the obligation that rests upon us to be faithful to a higher order of Science than we have hitherto known. Mrs. Eddy, in many passages in her books, pictures the inspiring and satisfying results that invariably follow a true outlook. She wrote from personal experience. From the time when, in her deepest need, she found the light, and the essential truths of Christian Science were revealed to her, her mental vision was expanded, and her spiritual outlook became brighter and brighter as the years passed by. It was impossible for her after that experience to take a short view of life, for Life to her was God, and God was All. On page 264 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" she says: "Mortals must look beyond fading, finite forms, if they would gain the true sense of things. Where shall the gaze rest but in the unsearchable realm of Mind?" And to show what this expanded outlook means, she adds: "As mortals gain more correct views of God and man, multitudinous objects of creation, which before were invisible, will become visible." These objects are those spiritual realities which, once apprehended, revolutionize the thought and impart to the human consciousness a new and truer view of God and His relation to man.

The beginner in Science is sometimes apt to think that this attainment is beyond him. More advanced students are familiar with the somewhat pathetic cry, "O that I could demonstrate as much as you do?" Or, "If I only had as much spiritual understanding as you have!" And there are even those who have for years found in Christian Science solace and help beyond their expectations, who lament their seeming failure to apprehend Truth with that clearness which, if they only knew it, is their birthright. The difficulty lies in the short view, which sees nothing that can help. All that comes within its scope is the testimony of the senses, that barren wall of matter, that accumulation of false beliefs which make up the so-called material man. The unreal assumes the appearance of the real; the temporal seems to be eternal. Thought centers upon sin, sickness, and death as necessary in the educative process by which man attains to harmony. Such a view never reaches farther than the pernicious teaching that there is a "soul of goodness in things evil." It is so circumscribed that it personalizes God and materializes man; it but faintly conceives the spiritual, and deceives by giving a quite fictitious appearance of power to the mutable and the mortal.

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