"RECEIVE THY SIGHT"
How many times the Bible prefaces the statement of a great spiritual truth with the word behold. The first chapter of Genesis, after setting forth the wonders of creation, states that "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good" (verse 31). The same chapter also states that "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him" (verse 27). Would it not be correct to say, then, that man, the idea of God, sees everything that He has made, and, behold, it is very good?
Man, God's expression or reflection, sees every good thing. No claim of evil can obstruct his vision, because nothing can separate him from God. Sight is as eternal as Life itself. True sight cannot be added to man by using a piece of glass. The real man already has perfect sight, the forever unchangeable sight of Spirit. The scope of spiritual vision is far beyond any material sense of sight. But one must clearly perceive this great fact in order to demonstrate its reality.
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Spiritual discernment is true sight. When someone clarifies something which we have not understood, we exclaim, "Oh, I see." Jesus said to one apparently blind (Luke 18:42), "Receive thy sight." He might have said, "Receive thy ability to discern."
Sight is positive. We sometimes think too much about unseeing error and not enough about beholding the truth. Unseeing error is negative and incomplete unless accompanied by seeing the truth. We speak of trying to unsee an error which has presented itself in ourselves or another, but do we take the necessary and final step of beholding the truth? Mary Baker Eddy tells us in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (pp. 476, 477): "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick." When Jesus said, "Receive thy sight," he knew that sight is a faculty of Mind, expressed by man here and now—a faculty never impaired, never absent, but belonging to man forever.
If we are accepting the verdict of mortal mind that matter is the source of sight, then we are having faith in matter instead of in God. Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:8), "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God," which might be paraphrased, "Blessed are the pure in thought: for they shall see good." If we are not seeing good, then we apparently do not have good sight. The sense of matter's reality is the mist which would dim our sense of good. This is the only mist there is.
Error would try to rob mankind of its vision of Truth. After his conversion to the truth on the road to Damascus, Paul's eyes were blinded, but his obedience to the light of Truth soon freed him from blindness. We too can be freed. Like Paul, we must go forward sustained by the vision of infinite good until all the scales of error's contriving fall from our eyes.
Paul no doubt had a sense of his unworthiness to bear the standard of Christianity; and perhaps we too, when called to higher service, may find ourselves depressed with a false sense of inadequacy. But Paul did not let his past mistakes prevent him from becoming God's messenger. With utmost humility he went forward in this line of light with vision undimmed by the awful thrusts of error. He could finally say to his followers (II Cor. 4:15, 18), "All things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God; ... while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen."
Time is often the leading error in our sense of dimming sight. We believe that time can rob us of that which God has bestowed for eternity. But Mrs. Eddy tells us in Science and Health (p. 468): "Eternity, not time, expresses the thought of Life, and time is no part of eternity. One ceases in proportion as the other is recognized." The ravages of time, then, must not be accepted as true, but must be proved untrue. The Scripture tells us that though Moses "was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated" (Deut. 34:7).
God gave us dominion over the sense of time. If this were not so, instantaneous healings would not be possible. Mortal sense says that there must be time for anything to be healed. Jesus proved this false. To the blind man he said, "Receive thy sight," and immediately he was healed. Many healings in Christian Science are instantaneous. Each of these healings is proof that we do have dominion over time. Why submit to the belief of time in the case of sight? We need not.
The second verse of a hymn in the Christian Science Hymnal reads (No. 144).
The mortal sense we must destroy,
If we would bring to light
The wonders of eternal Mind,
Where sense is lost in sight.
