Editorial July 29, 1922 Issue

The "still small voice"

Duncan Sinclair

The nineteenth chapter of I Kings is a most interesting one. It tells of Elijah's flight to Beer-sheba from the wrath of Jezebel, and of his experience thereafter with an angel under a juniper tree in the wilderness. After having comforted the prophet, the angel directs him to mount Horeb, where he has a wonderful experience. The narrative recounts how "a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks; ... but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake." Then followed a fire; "but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice." And God was in the "still small voice"!

The incident illustrates the immensity of the gulf which lies between the testimony of the so-called material senses and the witness of spiritual sense. It is extraordinary to think that Elijah, so long before Christ Jesus' time, so long before the time of Christian Science, had such a revelation of the unreality of material phenomena as he had upon the mountain, and that he heard the voice of God, Truth, so distinctly as he did, through spiritual sense. His experience bridges the long stretch of time that lies between his day and ours; for the central theme of Christian Science is that spiritual sense alone hears and alone can interpret the will of God, and that material sense defrauds and lies in every particular.

Now, Christian Science shows exactly what the nature of God is, and likewise what the nature of God's creation is. It declares that God is infinite Love, and the one and only cause. Hence, nothing that is destructive is caused by or proceeds from God. Consequently, neither hurricane, earthquake, nor fire can possibly be the product of His volition. What are these seemingly destructive forces, then? They are naught but the beliefs of supposititious mortal mind externalized or objectified. All the phenomena with which material sense is apparently acquainted are but the illusions of the dream that intelligence and life and substance and power are in matter. God's creation, however, from the infinite to the infinitesimal idea, is good, harmonious, perfect; and each idea ministers to the well-being of every other,—blesses every other. This is what Christian Science teaches. Indeed, Mrs. Eddy identifies the Science of being with the "still small voice;" for she says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 323), "It [Christian Science] is the 'still, small voice' of Truth uttering itself. We are either turning away from this utterance, or we are listening to it and going up higher."

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