Article October 9, 1926 Issue

The Turn in the Road

FRANCES H. PARKER

From the veranda of her mountain home, a student of Christian Science enjoyed the daily practice of letting her vision wander out through a rustic gateway to a picturesque turn in the road. Just beyond the gate, where the road dipped a little, a border of rocks had been carefully piled to insure fortification against destructive rains; and then, mounting a slight rise of ground, the turning road beckoned one's imagination on either to conjecture or to remember how it gracefully continued among the pines, whose uppermost branches were visible above the knoll. This beautiful bit of landscape had a refreshing influence upon the thought of the student, and as she mused upon it one day this question silently entered her consciousness: You have spent several months at the turn in the road. Do you not see in it more than mere physical beauty? Can you not discern in it the deeper beauty of a metaphysical lesson?

With the answer to this question came a long desired healing. As a strictly material sense of beauty was deserted for a clearer vision, which better measured up to the requirements of Spirit, the student found that she had turned from long months of mental struggle to a more sincere consecration of thought to the qualities of God. From a physical concept of beauty, the import of this picturesque bit of roadway had risen to be a symbol of healing Love. And in this way it became useful as a step to immortality. New applications of the lesson were daily seen, fostering unfoldment of that which makes for a progressive turn heavenward. "To be immortal, we must forsake the mortal sense of things," Mrs. Eddy writes on page 370 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," "turn from the lie of false belief to Truth, and gather the facts of being from the divine Mind."

The Scriptures, in so far as they record the history of human experience, present many stories of turns in the road, where men had left material concepts for glimpses of the spiritual universe. And at that point, the "beauty of holiness" carried them on to the highway of spiritual progress. Holiness graced every turn in the road leading to spiritual understanding, for holiness is consecration of thought to the qualities of God.

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