Article March 22, 1947 Issue

Reflection

EVE CRAIN

"Few persons comprehend what Christian Science means by the word reflection," writes Mary Baker Eddy on page 301 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. "Just as Christ Jesus referred many times to everyday objects to make clear some point in his teaching, so Mrs. Eddy uses the object lesson of a mirror to illustrate reflection, thereby bringing out the clearest possible sense of the inseparability of man from God. Immediately prior to the passage quoted. Mrs. Eddy states, "God is revealed only in that which reflects Life, Truth, Love.— yea, which manifests God's attributes and power, even as the human likeness thrown upon the mirror, repeats the color, form, and action of the person in front of the mirror."

This is a truth which has tremendous power for us if we will but use it. Think what it means to know that it is impossible to have a quality or condition which is not in God the original! If you stood before a mirror clad in black, you could not possibly see a reflection clothed in red. Why? Because red was not in the original. So no quality can appear in the spiritual man unless it is first in God. No selfish, inflated sense of man will ever rest in our thought when we see that there can be no variance from godliness, no abnormality in spiritual reflection.

It would be impossible to stand before a perfect mirror and see just half of one's person reflected: and yet how often it is mistakenly believed that only a limited measure of good is being reflected either by ourselves or by those about us. We admit that as children of God we reflect Love, but we complain of loneliness. We say that substance is infinite, but sometimes believe we are poor and limited, lacking even the necessities of life. We declare that man reflects the boundless activity of Life, but believe that we are unemployed. We concede that Mind is ever present, but imagine that justice and wisdom are absent. We know that God, our Father-Mother, is perfect, but we are fearful because we think that man, His beloved child and reflection, is sick. Truly "few persons comprehend what Christian Science means by the word reflection."

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