Editorial February 21, 1942 Issue

Perception

Evelyn F. Heywood

In speaking of the effect upon his disciples of Jesus' resurrection, Mary Baker Eddy writes on page 34 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," "It helped them to raise themselves and others from spiritual dulness and blind belief in God into the perception of infinite possibilities." The narrow limits and dark prospects of mortality were lifted; they beheld for the first time that there was another way to eternal life than through the shadow of death. There was in their midst one who had not only said of his human body, "I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again," but had actually proved it before their eyes in complete victory over death and the grave. On page 214 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes, "If Enoch's perception had been confined to the evidence before his material senses, he could never have 'walked with God,' nor been guided into the demonstration of life eternal."

The conflict between the material and the spiritual senses will go on as long as men accept in any direction the evidence of that which they see, hear, feel materially. Looking out upon a world of temporary and illusive concepts, they believe in matter as beautiful or hideous, as healthy or diseased. They believe in kindness and cruelty, in justice and injustice. And they believe themselves to be the victims of this contradictory existence. They do so until sight is given to blinded eyes and they cease to confuse reality and unreality, truth and error, power and powerlessness. Something of this appears in the writings of the poet Walt Whitman, in such passages as the following:

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

Perception

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access