Article February 22, 1947 Issue

"What went ye out for to see?"

ETHEL M. BARTLETT

In the eleventh chapter of Matthew's Gospel we find Jesus questioning the multitude as to their estimate of John the Baptist. As usual, his words kindled in his listeners a desire for a more spiritual viewpoint. "What went ye out into the wilderness to see?" he asked. "A reed shaken with the wind? ... A man clothed in soft raiment? ... A prophet? yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet."

Today the question, "What went ye out for to see?" presents a challenge to every Christian Scientist. The aggressiveness of mortal mind is evident on all sides, but this very aggressiveness is an indicatin of its fallibility. What is the Christian Scientist going out to see? Is he according reality to hate, envy, greed, lack, and the rest of the lies in mortal mind's category? No. On page 450 of the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," its author, Mary Baker Eddy, writes, "The Christian Scientist has enlisted to lessen evil, disease, and death; and he will overcome them by understandign their nothingness and the allness of God, or good." The recognition of what mortal mind claims to be doing and an understanding repudiation of its reality, together with the steadfast conviction of the omnipotence and omnipresence of God, will obliterate all trace of the error that seems so real and powerful.

Divine Mind is the creator of man; thus man, as Mind's idea, must be and always is governed and controlled by infinite intelligence. Knowing this, and realizing too that he of himself can do nothing, the Christian Scientist turns to Mind for the understanding, wisdom, and love which he requires to see aright. His answer to the challenge, "What went ye out for to see?" might be along this line of reasoning: I see good all around me because I strive to see as God causes man to see; I recognize the evidences of evil as but the arguments of aggressive mental suggestion, which has no creator, no intelligence, entity, or reality; and I deny evil any power or presence, because I know there is but one power and presence, divine Mind.

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