Article November 9, 1946 Issue

Lessons from a Magic Lantern

[Of Special Interest to Young People]

DENICE REHBURG KOCH

Several years before World War II we acquired a magic lantern. It was hailed with delight by the youngest member of the family, a lad of five. He liked nothing better than to convert our recreation room into a theater and invite family and friends to see his pictures. For this purpose he placed a screen at the far end of the room and arranged chairs in rows. After setting up the projector and darkening the room, he directed the guests to their seats with the aid of a flashlight, as ushers do. Once, quite by chance, he turned the flashlight upon the screen. To his astonishment, the picture projected there instantly vanished.

This trivial incident was recalled later when the boy, who was a pupil in a Christian Science Sunday School, manifested all the symptoms of a disease attributed to children. We remembered that our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, writes some interesting things about pictures and images in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," and proceeded to search for them with the aid of the Concordance.

This statement on page 418 was especially helpful: "Tumors, ulcers, tubercles, inflammation, pain, deformed joints, are waking dream-shadows, dark images of mortal thought, which flee before the light of Truth." We were enabled to see that the distressing symptoms of disease are but mental pictures, no more real than the pictures flashed upon the screen. They could no more resist the light of Truth than the magic lantern pictures could withstand the light of the flashlight.

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