Article November 6, 1926 Issue

Destroying the Graven Images

MILDRED SPRING CASE

Jesus said, speaking of little children, "In heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven." Often when a little child voices some one of these "spiritual intuitions," as Mrs. Eddy defines "angels" in part in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 581), and, lifting the veil, lets us see the purity of the unfoldments which come to the receptive, humble child thought, a radiance is shed upon our pathway, making us, in turn, become more humble, more receptive, more childlike. In simplicity a child seems to shut out the complexities of reasonings, and lets the light shine through in a clear, unobstructed ray.

One such experience recently came to the writer. A little five-year-old boy seemed to receive a very ugly gash upon his arm, which for the sake of cleanliness had to be temporarily covered with a bandage. Now, this little lad, happily, is a regular attendant at a Christian Science Sunday School, and the preceding Sunday he had heard the Bible story of the three Hebrew boys who, refusing to bow down to the graven image of King Nebuchadnezzar, had been thrown into the burning fiery furnace, from which they had been saved unharmed. He also knew well the First Commandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." So at the time when the mother was trying to close her eyes to the ugly picture manifesting itself upon the little boy's arm, he himself looked up in earnestness and sincerity and said, "Mother, this is just a graven image, and I am not going to bow down to it nor worship it."

This was a sure application of the truth he had imbibed in Sunday school; and a helpful little talk followed during which the mother and the child tried to understand that the ugly picture was but an image graven in thought, and, like the golden image of King Nebuchadnezzar, was mindless, harmless, powerless; also, like the image of gold, it could not talk or say it was sore or painful In fact, before they got through, it seemed almost a joke to the little lad that he should have so believed in it as actually to have shed tears over it. Of course, the "image" could not abide long in thought so purified—as, indeed, it did not; and the experience has since proved both a rebuke and an inspiration to the mother.

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