Article March 15, 1941 Issue

The Holy Place

LUCIA C. COULSON

WHEN there is "abomination of desolation" to the material senses, when our world seems falling about us, when the problem personal or collective looms large before us, then is the moment to see what it is that really stands in the holy place. It behooves us further to inquire just what the holy place signifies. The word "holy" comes from the word "whole," of Anglo-Saxon origin. The same word means also health. Wholeness certainly signifies completeness, perfection.

To stand, then, in that place of wholeness where the "abomination of desolation" claims to be, would mean to see man individually and collectively as whole, as perfect. To conceive man divinely as perfect and spiritual is truly to love. It is interesting to note that in the "Scientific Translation of Mortal Mind," on pages 115 and 116 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, the "Third Degree: Understanding" gives love as coming before health, which is followed by holiness. This might possibly imply that only when we attain love do we gain scientific health or wholeness which leads to holiness. In any case the holy place could only be attained by love, that which "thinketh no evil." It is not easy to love when "the abomination of desolation" is claiming our attention, thundering at our mental doors, yet that clearly is the moment when it is most needed. Nothing but love, infinite in power and in attraction, can transform the desolation and turn it into a fruitful field. The appeal of love is irresistible. This was illustrated in the garden of Gethsemane when Judas the traitor came through the dark olive grove to betray the Master with a kiss. Jesus knew this, he knew why Judas was approaching him, yet at that supreme moment, sweeping aside the testimony of the senses, he announced the divine fact about Judas and greeted him with the words, "Friend, wherefore art thou come?" What was the result? Repentance. Later Judas flung down the pieces of silver and took his own human life, but we may feel sure that the true selfhood of Judas began from that moment to emerge. He might have withstood any other appeal, any rebuke, but he could not resist the love that called him friend. Let no one fear that to love under all circumstances— in all conditions— might be to condone. Love obliterates the lie.

This is doubtless why the Christian Science textbook tells us (p. 567) that it is "the Lamb of Love" that detects and kills the wolves in sheep's clothing with their abominable qualities. The leading characteristic of the lamb, we know, is innocence, the consciousness of the unreality of evil. Armed with this gentle weapon, the lamb goes forth, and because evil is unreal it falls before it. Evil can fight those who give it life by believing it is real, but when its true nature is seen to be unreality, then it receives its deathblow. "You must find error to be nothing: then, and only then, do you handle it in Science," Mrs. Eddy says (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 334). To human sense it may seem strange that the lamb should be the model given to men, and stranger still that Spirit, the omnipotent, should be symbolized by a dove. This harmless creature has for centuries been used as the symbol of peace. Again, showing how divine Science reverses the mortal concepts of effectiveness and efficiency, the Scriptures inform us that when God speaks, His commands are not with thunder or with fire, nor are they heralded with trumpets, but that His presence and His behests are as "a still small voice." We must be still to hear a voice so still. The turbulence of mortal thought must go down, and consciousness be calm, that the quiet influence of the Divine may be felt.

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