Article April 22, 1916 Issue

The Comforter

M. LOUISE BAUM

"Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal." If these words of Thomas Moore are true, as Christians know them to be, then no multiplicity of sorrow, not the sorrows of all the earth, are beyond the healing power of divine Love. Christian Scientists, who understand the ever-presence of Life, know what it means to stand victorious before some seeming final grief, the utmost which mortal belief can do to hurt them. They know what it means to see the whole house become, as Shakespeare dared to phrase it, "a feasting presence full of light." They know what it means to cheer even those who come to comfort them, sharing thus the comfort wherewith they themselves are comforted of God. They know at last the meaning of Jesus' words to Martha, "I am the resurrection, and the life;" for there is no death, and they have seen into eternal life. They have seen, even though they cannot put it into words which mortal ears may hear, that no change has come for their beloved, but more light, more assurance of God, a brighter shining of that same beauty which has long sustained the Christian heart.

Christian Scientists know these things as a matter of understanding, not alone of hope or faith. In an hour of seeming loss or change they do not see "through a glass, darkly;" they have definite knowledge, clear as axiomatic truth. As they know that "a straight line is the shortest distance between two points," because they see it to be so, just so they know that Life is ever present, because they see it to be so. They look into the heart of divine Love, and they see there no shadow of darkness or fear. There is no loss; God's plan does not provide for loss or failure. His will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Our beloved do not die, for God is to them, to all, omnipresent Life.

But if Christians may know this amid the shadow of their own grief, since the extremity of human need is often the one hour when we really turn to God with all our heart and mind and strength, then surely Christians may stand with equal courage—yes, with the same radiant assurance of joy—in the very face of a world calamity. This can be done; it should be; it must be. It is the great duty laid in this hour on every one who has named the name of Christ. This is the testing time of Christianity. Now at last it must heed the first commandment; and the second is the corollary of the first: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image." This graven image is made in thought. It is built up of beliefs in matter, whose image replaces the image of God. So long as we look at this graven or material image of things above or below or around us, we shall see all creation groaning and travailing together in anguish. Whether it be the open despair of a world that at last acknowledges how it is poor and naked and defiled, or whether it be the hidden corruption of that whited sepulcher men call civilization and peace, it is a graven image of something God did not make which occupies the thought of mortality. The image of God should dwell in the secret place of thought, the reflection of God, which is—what? Man and the universe made in the heavenly likeness. When this vision absorbs us we cannot see the other; the pictures of hatred, death, and despair no longer appear. Love for God, the One "altogether lovely," has wiped them out.

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