Article February 15, 1936 Issue

Magnifying the Lord

W. STUART BOOTH

When the Psalmist sang, "O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together," his thought evidently was to praise God highly, to extol Him who was Israel's help and deliverer. Through divine direction and power the children of Israel had been liberated from Egyptian bondage and had been cared for during their self-imposed wandering in the wilderness. Through faith in God and obedience to His law the Israelites had been led dry-shod across the river Jordan, the walls of Jericho had fallen before them, and the promised land of Canaan had passed into their possession; sickness had been healed in their midst, and the hand of plague and pestilence had been stayed through prayer to God. Surely there was abundant reason for them to magnify and praise God.

Christian Science shows that scientifically praising and extolling God serves the practical purpose of opening our eyes to the presence and power of divine good; to our sense praise magnifies the Lord because it enables us to realize more clearly and fully the fact that God, good, is the all and only power. Thereby do we follow the example of Christ Jesus, whose life, words, and works constituted a continuous paean of praise to the Father of all. The Master's mission was to awaken mankind from the Adam-dream of life and mind in matter and thereby save men from sin and sickness, limitation and death. His understanding of the omnipotence and omnipresence of Spirit empowered Jesus to prove that man's health and life are spiritual, impeccable, and eternal, and that disease, discord, and death are temporal falsities. He magnified good continually, and he minimized, yes nothingized, evil consistently.

To one who points the small end of a telescope toward an object and looks at it thus through the instrument, the object appears small and distant, while an opposite procedure makes the object seem larger and nearer. The so-called material senses present the false claims that evil is more real, attractive, and powerful than good, that discord and disease are supported by irresistible laws, and that life is helpless before death, which is supposed to be inevitable. Thus the material senses, as it were, point the small end of the mental telescope toward God, so that, to those who accept such testimony. He seems far-off and unapproachable. In fact, from the standpoint of the so-called material senses Spirit seems nonexistent and matter seems all. Thus we see that this carnal mind blasphemer would magnify evil—sin and sorrow, disease and death—and make it loom large and appear real to men.

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