Editorial November 29, 1975 Issue

How Big Is Our World?

Peter J. Henniker-Heaton

Mrs. Eddy's first words in the Preface to Science and Health are: "To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings."^{Science and Health, p. vii;} No little crutch of safe personal interests is offered here, no cozy circle of old friends and familiar places, nor even the orthodox material view of our world as a tiny whirling speck of dust in a universe of other whirling specks of dust. If we are to enjoy the limitless blessings of God's day opened up to us by Christian Science, we need to lean on nothing less than "the sustaining infinite"; we need to acknowledge God as infinite creative intelligence and man as God's infinite spiritual idea living in the infinite universe of spiritual ideas.

But let us start a little farther back. How big is your world? How big is mine? Is it what Shakespeare described as "the great globe itself," or is it some half-dozen streets around our home and place of work? Is it a tight little world made up of a few friends and personal interests, sometimes comfortable and sometimes less so? Or, if we take a somewhat larger view, is it still only that whirling speck of dust?

The last words of Christ Jesus just before his ascension may have come as a surprise to his small group of faithful friends. These were young men, of no particular worldly distinction, members of a subject people remote from the earthly centers of power, no doubt speaking Greek and Latin, to whatever extent they did, with a provincial accent. Yet Jesus told them, "Ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judæ, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."^{Acts 1:8;}

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