Editorial September 27, 1913 Issue

The Vision of Man

John B. Willis

more surely determines what we are than an impelling sense of what we may become. It is the perception of our possibilities which brings inspirations to the heart and strength to the limbs of the otherwise weary aspirant, and it is just here that "Christ's Christianity" (Science and Health, p. 271) becomes a very godsend to every one who receives it.

Christ Jesus assigned a distinction to every son of man, of which in all the achievements of his own life he became the prototype and example. His appeal was no less universal than confident, even as he said, "And I, if I be lifted up . . . will draw all men unto me." Next to his recognition of the nature of God, one may say that the most wonderful, most farreaching fact about him was his vision of the nature of man in God's image. His incomparable influence over men is explicable only in the light of this fact of his knowledge of the truth of being as to man, and the further fact that to rare winsomeness of character he added a profound wisdom of address. He not only knew and personally conformed to the requirements of the divine ideal, but he knew human nature, its best possible line of advance, and his appeal was considerate for conditions, wisely opportune; in a word, his apprehension was practical. He knew that moral progress is not amenable to attempted compulsion, but that men are to be won away from their weakness by the irresistible attraction of an ideal which answers to their deeper, truer nature.

The great Wayshower therefore kept this vision of God's man constantly before them, not only in the information he gave them respecting man's origin and endowment, character and call, but in his own every-day exhibitions of godlike manliness. He was forever declaring for man's spiritual sonship, and that to manifest the divine is humanity's one great mission. He thus made men acquainted with their spiritual selfhood, stimulated their nobler ambitions, lured them into largeness, by quickening their every least love for beauty or goodness. His method was philosophic, incisive, stimulating. He was the ideal teacher because he not only elucidated the human problem, but he solved it for himself day by day before their eyes. This constituted the completeness of his ministry, as Mrs. Eddy has so finely and forcefully expressed it on page 54 of Science and Health: "Through the magnitude of his human life, he demonstrated the divine Life. Out of the amplitude of his pure affection, he defined Love. With the affluence of Truth, he vanquished error."

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