Reflection

ELIZABETH CROUSE

Of all the terms employed by our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, to elucidate Christian Science, none is more important than the word "reflection." It describes the nature of the real man. It replaces the personal sense of him as a creator, separate from his source—God—with a true sense of his individuality, depending on that source for the life, power and intelligence which he manifests. Man is the reflection of immortal Mind, the witness of God.

However, there appears to be a counterfeit mortal mind, the sum total of erroneous thinking, which is unreal—nothing—but which seems to reverse every spiritual truth. It is based on material sense instead of spiritual sense. Men apparently receive its false suggestions and reproduce them, and this process has been elevated in human thought into a supposed law. We require the spiritual discernment of the truth which Christian Science has brought to the world, to realize that the whole mesmerism of suggestion is but the counterfeit of true reflection.

In Genesis (1:27) we are told that man was created in the image and likeness of God; in other words, that man is God's reflection, God's idea. "How are veritable ideas to be distinguished from illusions?" Mrs. Eddy asks on page 88 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures;" and she answers, "By learning the origin of each."

The false belief about man is the Adam-dream. It would start with two substances, Spirit and matter, as man's origin; it would acknowledge two powers, good and evil, thus implying that man can be other than the reflection of the one perfect God; hence the sense of disobedience which weighs upon mankind, and includes all sin, because, in the last analysis, obedience means reflection, perfect response. Through the suggestion of materiality arises the false sense of separation from God, with its attendant fear and all the negative experiences of want and woe which afflict mankind.

There is but one refuge for human consciousness. Mrs. Eddy tells us (ibid., p. 15) that the closet of prayer of which Jesus speaks "typifies the sanctuary of Spirit, the door of which shuts out sinful sense but lets in Truth, Life, and Love." We are to turn our thoughts to the right side, turn positively to the side of good; we are to obey the First Commandment and recognize only one God. Then we cannot be mesmerized by the negative suggestions of mortal mind or material sense.

True thoughts have the power of Truth behind them. We are thinking truly only when we are consciously reflecting divine Mind, of which each one of us in reality is an individual expression. Counterfeit mortal man, the "old man," apparently expressing the mesmerism of mortal mind, disappears as the true man appears. As we turn wholly to divine Mind, fill our consciousness with divine ideas, and are guided by divine intelligence, we reflect the qualities of goodness, intelligence, spirituality, beauty, harmony, love, and joy. There will then be no opportunity for the false suggestions of mortal mind to enter our thought (see The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 210). Thus protected, we shall admit neither sin nor sorrow. To know our real selves as the reflection of one perfect Mind gives us the confidence necessary to uplift every phase of human life.

When thought is elevated to realize that the good qualities which we once ascribed to a so-called limited human soul are actually to be found in fullness and perfection in the one Soul of the universe—God—and are reflected by man, His idea, then we understand how human capacities are increased. "Whatever is possible to God, is possible to man as God's reflection," our beloved Leader, Mrs. Eddy, tells us (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 183).

Recognizing ourselves as in reality the reflection of the one perfect Mind, or God, we realize that we are capable of every good thing. It is the understanding of Spirit and of man as God's reflection which alone will save the world, bringing the divine qualities into all human relationships and uplifting all human experience.

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