Article November 1, 1919 Issue

The Dawn

ELIZABETH JACOB

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE holds us to high ideals, pointing out continually that "the Christlike understanding of scientific being and divine healing includes a perfect Principle and idea,—perfect God and perfect man,—as the basis of thought and demonstration" (Science and Health, p. 259). When this premise is accepted by a young student he reaches out with more understanding and consciously grows nearer those ideals which he has heretofore but dimly sensed as real. The following is an illustration in the life of a student who, having accepted Christian Science as the truth, immediately passed through a series of demonstrations each proving more conclusively to her budding thought that the truth upon which she seemed tremblingly standing was absolute. One afternoon she was bound on an errand of mercy in the most congested district of a large city. The work seemed hopeless because of an apparently never ending stream of human poverty and despair which presented itself for rehabilitation. Indistinctly these thoughts came to her, until it seemed that even the silver lining of the cloud was gone, and she mentally cried, "Where is God? I don't see Him anywhere, and how could one see Him amid such sordid surroundings?"

Then almost at her feet she saw a tiny baby girl. She was poorly clad and very dirty. She had in her hands a wide-brimmed old hat, probably rescued from an ash can, and with it she was attempting to dip up the gutter water to give drink to a large horse that stood near her. The baby did not know the water was dirty nor that her efforts for the horse were useless. To her thought the horse needed a drink, and she was doing her best to help him get it. It was not the horse, however, that needed a drink from the child that afternoon; it was one darkened with discouragement, who was passing by, and through the baby's loving act received, as it were, "the water of life." For it was love that was shining through the act of the child, and the recognition of this swept away the weary mist, and the worker went on her way rejoicing that God is, and that He is lighting the way for all His ideas.

With uplifted thought, outward conditions quickly changed. The sun shone again, the air grew fresh and bracing, the shouts of the children turned to music in her ears, and as never before the student comprehended the unlimited meaning of the text, "And a little child shall lead them." Truly, there is no respect of persons with God, and in this world struggle to attain the divine, this stupendous truth is breaking in upon and leveling the thoughts of men. Wearily, tearfully, and fearfully we struggle with wrong thought; but always with the continued desire for right thinking comes a burst of sunlight and our beloved Leader's words in her wonderful interpretation of the Lord's Prayer as given on page 16 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" become to us a living, holy power, "Thy kingdom is come; Thou art ever-present."

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