Windows and Light

MARY P. BELLINGER

The morning had seemed very long to a certain student of Christian Science. For several days the heat had been intense, even for July, while an accumulation of work had been brought to her desk. A headache had stayed with her for nearly a week despite her efforts to apply her understanding of God's healing law to the problem, and looking at the weary expression on the faces of the clerks busily working near, her thought seemed to go down under the general feeling of strain and weariness. The thermometer had registered over a hundred degrees in the office the previous afternoon, and somehow all the morning she could not keep from dwelling on that fact in thought, and dreading what it might do the coming afternoon. The recollection of the Hebrew children passing unscathed through the burning fiery furnace did not seem to give any consolation.

The noon hour came, and hastening through her lunch, she took the newly arrived copy of the Sentinel, which she had brought with her that morning, and settled down in the hope of finding help in its comforting pages. She had no sooner opened the paper than a young clerk across the aisle came over, seated himself near, and entered into conversation. Mentally denying the disappointment she felt at the interruption, the Scientist talked pleasantly to the boy, when suddenly the conversation turned, and the young fellow said, "I just can't stand that man," referring to the chief clerk, whose desk was near.

Now the student had heard unfavorable remarks made by another clerk about this same man soon after entering that department, and for that reason had taken special occasion to observe him closely. In dealing with the hundreds of men who came to him for their final statements, she had been surprised and glad to find behind the short words and bursque manner a true kindness that had many times gone out of its way to help a stranded man. So she immediately set to work to correct the false impression. She said, "Perhaps his voice sounds cross to you because you do not hear what he really says and see what he does. I sit nearer than you do," and she then went on to relate instances of two kind acts which had come under her observation, and while she talked the young man listened earnestly. Finally he rose and said with a smile, "Well, I like him better now, since you told me that."

And then a strange thing happened. The hour was over, there was no time for study, but to her astonishment the student realized that she was healed. The wise man said, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." In correcting with all her might the false impression of an-other, Spirit had corrected for her the false impression of herself. The thought of the thermometer and the pile of work on her desk were faced without fear or care, even with a smile, and the afternoon, though probably as hot as the day before, was one of the happiest spent in many a day, because her consciousness was filled with loving, grateful thoughts for the operation of spiritual law.

On page 295 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy says, "The manifestation of God through mortals is as light passing through the window-pane." We read countless testimonies in our Christian Science periodicals of those who are healed by reading the Christian Science textbook. Diseases, bad habits, and errors of which they had not thought of being healed, disappear, because in the consciousness filled with light no darkness can dwell. A very successful practitioner once told the writer that she had struggled one day with a sense of illness until by afternoon she could hardly hold up her head, when she was called to treat a patient. She responded, and not only made a wonderful demonstration of healing for the patient, but was herself healed in so doing. And so we find that in endeavoring to realize and express the truth, it is often the unthought-of act on our part, the unexpected window which we open to the light, which brings us our own freedom. And the effect is always the same. No matter how many demonstraions of healing we may have had the revelation of Truth never loses its charm. Each demonstration brings just as much freshness of rejoicing, and we thus understand more fully God's word, "Behold, I make all things new." And when we come to think of it, how little Christian Science demands of us in return for all our blessings,—just to understand and speak the truth about God, and each other, and ourselves.

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