Article November 7, 1914 Issue

Illusions

HELEN W. BANNON

From our youth upward our religious teachers have sought to impress upon us the vanity, the unsatisfying nature of all earthly things; but the unreality of these things had not yet dawned on human consciousness, and the pious words seemed to the listeners little else than a figure of speech. David's affirmation, "Surely every man walketh in a vain show," was simply the language of metaphor, conveying no hint of unreality, until the scientific explanation was given by our Leader when she said, "You command the situation if you understand that mortal existence is a state of self-deception and not the truth of being" (Science and Health, p. 403). St. Paul's statement, "If a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself," is surely a most emphatic declaration of the unreality of matter and mortal man; but through our ignorance its metaphysical significance has not been apprehended.

"Are sin, disease, and death real?" is the title of a Lesson-Sermon read periodically in all Christian Science churches; and the line of thought running through the passages selected from the Bible and the Christian Science text-book, brings home a clear sense of the unreality of these evil beliefs to all those who have ears to hear. For many, however, and especially those who are taking up the inquiry for the first time, this doctrine of the unreality of evil, upon which Christian Science insists, is hard to grasp; and the difficulty arises entirely from the false testimony of the five physical senses, described in Revelation as "the great dragon . . . that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world."

All the old religions had their dragon, or serpent,—from the one that beguiled our first parents to that against which St. John warned the early church,—and it has always been regarded as the symbol of evil. Every visitor to China will remember the royal standard, bearing on its yellow silk folds a great black dragon, each paw having five extended claws; and it may be, as English resident in China stated, that these claws typify the five physical senses of man, so unreliable and even dangerous if trusted to. It would seem that Christ Jesus sought to convey this lesson in his parable of the ten virgins; five of them wise, and five foolish. As is well known, ancient writers of learning and erudition sought to clothe their ideas in the language of metaphor, thus concealing from the vulgar and ignorant truths which were perceptible to the more enlightened, and Christ Jesus himself was careful not to cast pearls before the unappreciative.

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