Article March 20, 1920 Issue

Magnify the Lord

ANNIE MARIE BLISS

A Storm gathered over the Sea of Galilee. The angry winds and waves joined forces in an attack to sink a ship which carried precious freight,—a little party of students and their teacher. Louder and louder shrieked the winds, higher and higher rose the waves, until they covered the ship, and the frightened men in despair of their lives, wakened Jesus from his peaceful sleep with a rebuke for his apparent indifference to their impending doom. Their teacher's words spoken on the sunny slope of the hillside were but faintly recalled in the struggle with the storm, and they could not comprehend his undisturbed sleep. It was as the great Physician that they had seen Jesus prove the accuracy of his teaching in healing the sick and sinful by his word of authority. Their faith had not yet reached the point of applying the teaching to quiet a tempestuous sea. The frightened cry for help was promptly answered by Jesus, whose command to the angry waves, "Peace, be still," was followed by the tender reproof to the students, "Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?"—and we read that "the wind ceased, and there was a great calm." Three short words spoken by Jesus the Christ, with the authority of spiritual understanding, stilled the troubled waters of Galilee and brought quietness and confidence to fear-filled hearts.

Another hurricane of fear and storm of pain fell upon a sleeping student of Christian Science, who was awakened one morning by a call from her own troubled thought crying out for help. While struggling with loneliness and difficulty in gathering her wandering thoughts sufficiently to declare the truth, only three words came, "Magnify the Lord." She did not at first catch their import and paid but little heed to them, continuing to struggle in the effort to frame a "treatment." Over and over again these three words rang like a bell buoy's warning on a foggy sea: "Magnify the Lord." So insistently did they repeat themselves that she listened while the message unfolded to her like a sweet conversation from friendly lips. "What does it mean," she asked, "and how shall I do it?" "Magnify means to enlarge," came the answer. "Enlarge God? No one can make God larger. Can Omnipotence be enlarged?" "No, God is All-in-all; it is the human sense or small understanding of God that must be enlarged." "But how can I do it?" "In just the same way that anything is enlarged to human vision, —by the use of a magnifying glass. The glass does not change the size of the type under it; the type only seems larger to the eye which looks through the glass." "And where is my magnifying glass? What is it like?" "It is the lens of Spirit through which human consciousness must see God."

The light began to break through the clouds, and as its first faint rays fell upon the problem of pain before her, she remembered, as Mrs. Eddy tells us in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 298), that "Life, Truth, and Love are the realities of divine Science. They dawn in faith and glow full-orbed in spiritual understanding. As a cloud hides the sun it cannot extinguish, so false belief silences for a while the voice of immutable harmony, but false belief cannot destroy Science armed with faith, hope, and fruition." Then swift-winged messages, bringing spiritual truths she had learned in her study of Christian Science, added their song of praise to the rapidly accumulating evidence of man as a spiritual idea continually unfolding good to astonished humanity, and as never the manikin of matter with its garment of pain. Through this lens of Spirit she saw God so much larger than ever before, enfolding His children, of whom she was one. How comforting it was to know that God had always been the same before as after her view was enlarged. A song of praise replaced the moan of matter; the pain and troubling ceased; the calm of courage remained upon which to begin a working day that was rounded out with happy accomplishment.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

Magnify the Lord

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access