Editorial May 16, 1931 Issue

Spiritual Vision

Duncan Sinclair

In the twenty-ninth chapter of Proverbs is a verse—the eighteenth—which all may ponder with profit. It reads, "Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he." Does not history, which shows that nation after nation has perished on the rocks of materiality, perished because they had lost the moral and spiritual vision that alone was able to preserve them, testify to the truth of this statement? On the other hand, does not history show that when nations have had spiritual vision, when they have been spiritually and morally endowed and been obedient to the law of God—the law of good—they have been preserved? It is indisputable that the spirituality begotten of spiritual vision insures the safety and progress of the human race, as it insures the safety and progress of the individual, and that lack of spiritual vision, with its attendant materialism, halts human progress and would appear to bring about the destruction of mankind.

The people need vision—spiritual vision. Not a single nation in the world but needs it, since not one of them is free from the devastating tendencies of materialism. What can be thought, for instance, of a government that would seek to educate its people in the fallacy that God does not exist; that would substitute expediency for morality; that would endeavor to quench spirituality with its lofty aspirations after good? What can be thought of those within a nation who forget the Golden Rule and gamble their morality away on the chance of acquiring material riches by impoverishing others? What can be thought of those who set themselves systematically to disregard a nation's laws, a nation whose just government protects them? The fallacy of materialism, with its resultant laxity of morals and disregard for law and order, can be uprooted only through spiritual vision.

On page 586 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy defines "eyes" as follows: "Spiritual discernment,—not material but mental." She then adds, "Jesus said, thinking of the outward vision, 'Having eyes, see ye not?' (Mark viii. 18.)" Spiritual discernment, then, or spiritual vision, is not material perception; it does not pertain to the material sense of sight. It is the spiritual faculty which all men possess whereby they are able to discern spiritual truth. And how wonderful that men do possess this faculty, since without it they would be in utter ignorance of God and His spiritual creation! No one has ever seen any of God's ideas through the material eye. No attribute of God, no spiritual quality, has ever been discerned materially. Spiritual vision alone enables us to perceive the ideas of divine Mind, the attributes, the qualities, of Soul.

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