Article January 12, 1918 Issue

Perception Which Heals

REV. ANDREW J. GRAHAM

Interpreted literally and historically a passage of Scripture has no more power to bring peace and health to sick and sinning mortals than has a quotation from Homer's Iliad or Cæsar's Commentaries. All Scripture must be perceived spiritually and in the present tense, and as applicable and available here and now for rebuke, warning, instruction, pardon, peace, health, and harmony.

In the one hundred and fourteenth psalm we read, "When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language; Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion." It is generally admitted that these words record a historic fact; that is, that the descendants of Jacob had been delivered from Egyptian bondage and had started on their journey to the promised land in Palestine. But they hold much more, for the lines have a spiritual, metaphysical meaning compared with which the historical and literal is but as the husk. Mrs. Eddy says on page 547 of Science and Health: "The Scriptures are very sacred. Our aim must be to have them understood spiritually, for only by this understanding can truth be gained. ... It is this spiritual perception of Scripture, which lifts humanity out of disease and death and inspires faith."

Christian Scientists have inherited a marvelous aid to gaining the spiritual perception of Scripture. Mrs. Eddy has given them in"Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" a chapter entitled Glossary, in which one hundred and twenty-five words, most of which occur frequently in the Bible and Science and Health, are defined. In speaking of this chapter she says, "It contains the metaphysical interpretation of Bible terms, giving their spiritual sense, which is also their original meaning" (p. 579). In her various works our Leader gives other definitions which the student of Christian Science may remember with profit. For instance, on page 578 of Science and Health "house" is defined as "consciousness." The psalm already quoted has at least four words whose spiritual meaning, as given by Mrs. Eddy, substituted for the material sense, invests the whole passage with life and makes that life ours in our pilgrimage day by day from sense to Soul.

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