Right Anticipations

CLARA SCHRADER STREETER

In one of the art galleries in the city of Munich, Germany, is an interesting picture called "The Traveling Youth," one of Moritz von Schwind's idealistic portrayals, which represents a young man with a knapsack at his side resting beside the gnarled trunk of an old tree. Before him is spread a lovely vista of sunny skies, hazy mountains, castles on craggy summits, and a city half hidden among trees and walls. A road winding through blossoming fields leads under an arched gateway into the city, and beyond to the far-off hills. It is a picture of enchantment; not, perhaps, the actual landscape, but the picture which the youth has framed in fancy as lying before him, and toward which he is wending his way, that he may realize the pleasures he now possesses only in anticipation.

The word "anticipate" is derived from the Latin ante, meaning before, and capere, to take, to capture. In its literal sense the word thus means to take possession of beforehand. That is just what the youth in the picture is represented as doing, taking possession in thought of the good which he desires, and which he, in fancy, has pictured as awaiting his conquest; he is traveling toward some beautiful future or goal of high attainment.

In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 566) Mrs. Eddy has given us a word-picture in which she sets forth the experience of the children of Israel in their wanderings, saying, in part, "As they were led through the wilderness, walking wearily through the great desert of human hopes, and anticipating the promised joy,—so shall the spiritual idea guide all right desires in their passage from sense to Soul, from a material sense of existence to the spiritual, up to the glory prepared for them who love God."

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