Article January 8, 1916 Issue

Reflection

LOUISE KNIGHT WHEATLEY

The subject of reflection, as understood in Christian Science, is of such tremendous import that one will indeed be grateful if he may but touch the hem of its garment. Yet it may well be given earnest consideration, because it is one of the fundamental teachings upon which the whole superstructure of Christian Science rests. Our conscious capacity to do and to be is in exact proportion to our understanding of man's true identity as the perfect likeness of God.

This great verity the world in general, however, seems indisposed to admit. It agrees with Christian Science that God is perfect, but it decidedly objects to maintaining the same thing about man. It readily agrees that God is beyond the reach of the thousand and one ills "that flesh is heir to,"—indeed to affirm otherwise about a Supreme Being would be practically unthinkable,—yet it believes that man is subject to all these things, and it thinks this with apparently no effort whatever. This is, perhaps, largely because it has failed to distinguish between the real man of God's creating and the frail, erring concept of the human mind called a mortal. Christian Science, however, makes this distinction very plain, for it teaches that man, being the reflection of Spirit, cannot be material but must be wholly spiritual; hence man can never be seen in, through, or by means of matter. In Science and Health (p. 305) Mrs. Eddy says, "As there is no corporeality in the mirrored form, which is but a reflection, so man, like all things real, reflects God, his divine Principle, not in a mortal body."

If we would give ourselves a simple object-lesson along this line, let us study the reflection of a rose in a mirror. Probably the first thing which will impress us is the fact that it has no corporeality whatever. Although in shape, size, form, and color it is the exact counterpart of the rose before the mirror, it possesses all these qualities without a single material accompaniment; in other words it is self-evident that its true substance is not in matter. All the substance it has is what it possesses as reflection. It is not the rose in the crystal vase, but it is the image and likeness of that rose. And is this not also true of man, of whom God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness"?

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