Article April 21, 1951 Issue

THE BEAM AND THE MOTE

VIRGINIA DORSEY WHITAKER

Of profound significance to all who are striving earnestly to widen the scope of their demonstration of Christian Science is the familiar quotation (Matt. 7:3–5): "Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

One Bible authority speaks of the beam and the mote as the plank and the splinter. This illustration portrays to us vividly the necessity of looking first within our own eye, or consciousness, for anything that is not Christlike, rather than in our neighbor's. For a splinter is insignificant, indeed, as compared to a plank.

The acceptance of the responsibility for what one beholds in another, instead of merely for what he himself does and manifests, is hard for the human mind. It would still like to cling to the old theological belief that when one has repented of errors of omission and commission and has washed his own garments clean, then he is entitled to survey the error about him with a certain complacency and self-righteousness, grateful for his own freedom from wrong, but still seeing as real the shortcomings of others.

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