Wider Horizons

FAITH HOLMES HYERS

It is instinctive with men to seek to widen their horizons. They climb to the mountain top to gain a greater range of vision. They seek through education, invention, and travel to increase their mental vistas. Space-defying inventions and discoveries are bringing the peoples of the world into closer touch with one another than ever before, and widening national horizons. Family interests are developing into community loyalties; community affairs are reaching out toward national interests; and national progress is seen to be interlocked with international welfare.

The years that have brought progress in invention and education have been blessed, as well, with spiritual enlightenment. There is an increasing tendency in the leaders of the great nations to recognize the need of spiritual strength and spiritual vision in the affairs of men. Religion has sometimes seemed to tend to narrow the outlook, to confine one's sense of good to an arbitrary groove, shutting out the possibility of good in any other direction. But the interpretation of religion which has been given to this age by Christian Science excludes no good, no possible achievement; rather does it enlarge and widen men's spiritual vision until their horizon includes the whole of God's creation. It brings to every one who accepts its teachings,

"The freer step, the fuller breath,
The wide horizon's grander view,
The sense of Life that knows no death,—
The Life that maketh all things new."

The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, takes us to the mountain top of spiritual vision when she gives us this definition in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (pp. 468, 469): "Life is divine Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit. Life is without beginning and without end. ... Life is neither in nor of matter." The horizon which was bounded by the span of earthly existence recedes into boundless distance in the light of this sense of Life. The grandeur of the universe, which is the reflection of Life "without beginning and without end," lies unveiled; and we cease to believe that physical activity constitutes Life. Is it not this spiritual sense of Life to which Jesus referred when he said, "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent"?

Christian Science not only takes us to the mountain top of spiritual vision, but also walks with us in the valleys of daily experience; and by loving admonition and precept it enables us to prove, step by step, that the understanding of what Life is, brings harmony and health to every disturbed or diseased sense of life. We read on page 265 of Science and Health, "Man understands spiritual existence in proportion as his treasures of Truth and Love are enlarged." We may add to our "treasures of Truth and Love" by learning more about God or Life. Learning that "Life is neither in nor of matter," we shall cease to search for happiness in an accumulation of matter, and shall turn away from the constant contemplation and discussion of materiality to the study of spiritual Truth. Knowing that "Life is without beginning and without end," we shall lose the fear of death, and thus be enabled to face with greater courage the problems which present themselves to human experience. Understanding that man reflects the one infinite Mind, we can entertain no thought of hate, jealousy, or indifference toward our brother; for "the wide horizon's grander view" includes every one of God's ideas in one grand brotherhood.

As with the one who climbs the mountain, who not only gains inspiration and refreshment, but also loses the weight of personal burdens, which suddenly appear trivial and petty in his enlarged horizon, so in the light of Christian Science unworthy jealousies, fears, and limiting beliefs fade into the mist of unreality before the vision of a universe created and governed by God, divine Principle. Thinking of our own existence as the reflection of this infinite power which is Life, we are able to say with the Psalmist, "The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" As Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health, p. 265): "This scientific sense of being, forsaking matter for Spirit, by no means suggests man's absorption into Deity and the loss of his identity, but confers upon man enlarged individuality, a wider sphere of thought and action, a more expansive love, a higher and more permanent peace."

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Spiritualizing Self

September 6, 1924

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