The Mirror of Divine Science

VESTA MAY SAUNDERS

In many single paragraphs of her great textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy throws spiritual illumination directly onto the path that leads out of the mystifying mazes of material living in which humanity seems to move to the open, unbounded horizon of reality. There is seen God's perfect spiritual creation, man and the universe.

One such paragraph found on pages 515 and 516 reads: "Your mirrored reflection is your own image or likeness. If you lift a weight, your reflection does this also. If you speak, the lips of this likeness move in accord with yours. Now compare man before the mirror to his divine Principle, God. Call the mirror divine Science, and call man the reflection. Then note how true, according to Christian Science, is the reflection to its original. As the reflection of yourself appears in the mirror, so you, being spiritual, are the reflection of God. The substance, Life, intelligence, Truth, and Love, which constitute Deity, are reflected by His creation; and when we subordinate the false testimony of the corporeal senses to the facts of Science, we shall see this true likeness and reflection everywhere."

We can appreciate something of the experience of one who arouses himself sufficiently to look into the mirror of Christian Science held up by the author of its textbook. Even in that first glimpse the newcomer to this Science can see enough to make him realize that a life filled with the understanding of divine Principle, God, is something very different from a life based on the beliefs of the corporeal senses. Such a glimpse of reality can change his whole course of living. Thus his thought is lifted away from matter to divine Mind, God.

In ordinary daily experience one looks into his mirror to help him complete or improve his appearance. How much wiser for one to turn often to the mirror of divine Science to glimpse his real and only selfhood. Universal and unchanging light, the light of Mind, shines forth from God and is forever manifested by His reflection, man, in perfect qualities. Jesus said (John 5:19), "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." How imperative, then, to see God through the mirror of divine Science as supreme Life, Truth, Love, and, seeing, to image forth here and now the truthful, loving, and eternal qualities which constitute man's true nature.

Sometimes to purblind mortal sense there are evidences of faults, flaws, concussions, or disfigurations appearing in the experience of oneself or one's neighbor. Looking into the mirror of divine Science, we find, however, not imperfection but the flawless reflection of God—man—manifesting love, health, harmony, perfection. As we see increasingly the perfection of God and His reflection, symbols of evil disappear from our thinking and the reality of good alone remains.

Continuing to gaze into the unfathomable depths of divine Science, we shall see ever-unfolding spiritual views of the universe of Mind, harmonious and eternal. Intelligence, loving-kindness, patience, gladness, right activity, are found to be spiritual qualities, which man reflects as God's image and likeness. The more of God one understands, the more one knows of man, for God and His expression are inseparable. Man is seen to be spiritual, eternal, Godlike. Our Leader affirms (Science and Health, p. 262), "These clearer, higher views inspire the Godlike man to reach the absolute centre and circumference of his being."

Sometimes one may feel that it is hard to see into this mirror of divine Science, that he cannot seem to find the spiritual illumination which has so gladdened the lives of others. Is Science really dark and obscure? Is God far away? Is it not, rather, that the eyes of the student are closed to the truth of being? Perception is always made clearer by following Jesus' remedy for mortal thinking (Luke 6:42), "Cast out first the beam out of thine own eye." This casting out of any false belief in a power apart from God—beams of prejudice, condemnation, or envy—is wonderfully rewarded with the reality of good. For we see in the mirror of divine Science no evidence of a fallen past, an uncertain future, or a dubious now, but on the contrary an ever-fuller view of the eternal unity of perfect God and perfect man.

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