Article October 21, 1922 Issue

The Perfect Pattern

LUCILE B. DOELLE

Some time ago the writer heard of a poor man who had learned to love a little boy. This love made him desire to do something for the child to make him happy; so he gathered some rough pieces of wood together, and carved figures of animals and flowers out of them. The child was delighted, and never tired of playing with his new toys, or of watching the skillful hands working for him. One day, holding a rough piece of lumber before the child. the man asked, "Do you see the rabbit?" "No," replied the child. "Why," said the man, "he is there just as plain as day. All there is to do is to cut the wood away from him." How true! With his keen eye for form and his skill in carving, he could already see the perfect figure. Our Way-shower, Jesus the Christ, always saw the perfect everywhere; and the beliefs of error obscuring the perfect fell away as he used the sharp edge of Truth.

How often we know the perfect to be around us; yet, instead of working carefully in thought to destroy everything unlike good, we leave error, apparently, to disfigure the perfect,—we leave thoughts of resentment, lack, or selfishness here, malice and envy there! What if the carver had left certain rough pieces of wood on the rabbit? The child would not have cared so much for it then. It might merely have represented to him a piece of wood, in which he could take no interest. But the man carved away every imperfect particle and line. Is not this what every sincere student of Christian Science is trying to do? And we do this in so far as we deny and destroy our own belief in error whenever it presents itself to our thought, whether it be, apparently, manifested in a stranger on the street or in a loved one in our home; whatever the place or form, our duty is to destroy our belief in it. Is not this obeying Jesus' command, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself"? Is not this a way of doing "some daily good ... to Thine, for Thee"? As we sing in one of the hymns written by Mrs. Eddy (Poems, p. 13):—

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