Editorial September 8, 1945 Issue

Scientific Reflection

Margaret Morrison

On page 301 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" its author, Mary Baker Eddy, says, "Few persons comprehend what Christian Science means by the word reflection;" and she devotes the following four or five pages to clarifying the meaning of that word as it is used in Science. Later on in the same book, on pages 515 and 516, she again takes up the subject, further clarifying it. There she tells us that in the mirror of divine Science we find the true reflection of Mind, which is man. In an exact knowledge of God we learn to know man in His image and likeness. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."

We are accustomed to think of reflection as requiring a reflector, an element apart from the original on which the reflection is to be cast, and without which there would be no reflection. This may cause a sense of something between the original and its reflection, a medium which may cause a deflection, inexact portraiture, or distortion. When divine Science is accepted as our mirror, how truly mental both origin and reflection become, and how exactly the reflection must match the original in nature, substance, and activity! Having the true mirror of Science in which to gaze, we no longer seek to find man through the mirror of the physical or material senses, which can throw back only false, inexact, and distorted views of the creator and His creation, Mind and its idea, man, including the universe.

Christ Jesus presented to the world the perfection of reflection in his words and works. This was best expressed in his well-known declaration, "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise." There is no sense of corporeality here; no belief that man of himself could create, do, or be something apart from the Father. On page 104 of "Miscellaneous Writings" Mrs. Eddy says, "In obedience to the divine nature, man's individuality reflects the divine law and order of being." God's law and order are omnipotent, never set aside so that man and the universe could in the minutest degree reflect anything unlike the perfection of the divine nature.

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