How Seest Thou

ESTHER HIGGS

If one were looking at a beautiful landscape through a pane of red glass, all the trees, the sky, the grass, and other objects would appear red; and if one had always looked at the landscape through red glass it would be difficult indeed to convince him that the trees and grass are green and the sky blue. He would point to them through his red glass and declare them to be red, and nothing could convince him to the contrary until he discovered that it was the medium through which he was looking that was red, and not the objects themselves.

Is it not ever thus with corporeal sense testimony? We look at life through the medium of material thinking, and see the universe as material; our thoughts are educated to believe in evil, and we perceive the sordid, the sinful, the miserable, and the imperfect, where we should behold the spiritually beautiful, perfect, and good. How true it is in daily experience that we see that for which we look. I well remember a visit to the country being spoiled for me by a wrong perspective. My companion upon that occasion was a friend who had allowed the habit of criticism so to grow upon her that she had become almost an expert in the art of detecting weak points in the character or the work of those with whom she came in touch. Thus it was inevitable that our hostess should come under the searchlight of criticism and be found wanting. This lady I much admired for her many excellent qualities and had previously spent a very happy time at her home, but now the sinister suggestions to which I unguardedly allowed myself to listen, stole away the joy of the visit; and upon searching for the reason, I found that I had been looking through the wrong medium. When the disciples were filled with fear because of the storm, Jesus' thought was so filled with peace that in the exercise of spiritual dominion he calmed the storm, in the memorable and reassuring words, "Peace, be still;" and we read that "the wind ceased, and there was a great calm." Thus our outlook upon life generally and the corresponding usefulness and success or dismalness and failure that accompany it, are largely determined by the medium through which we look. Is our viewpoint spiritual? Then all must be well. Or are we so clouded by material thinking that everything appears material and deformed, imperfect and discordant?

In our church life also, how often we look through the wrong medium, the medium of human opinion or personal bias. We wax eloquent and sometimes grow indignant with those who differ from us, ignorant of the fact that in our selfrighteousness we are forgetting to let that Mind be in us "which was also in Christ Jesus." With true humility and the daily effort to purify our thinking of all error, we shall gradually become a clearer reflection of the divine and, as the psalmist said, "In thy light shall we see light." There is sufficient light to solve all our problems if we only strive to see all things as God sees them. It is helpful to remember that Jesus saw the perfect man, God's child, where the crowd saw only a leper. Thus we should seek to identify ourselves with the real man instead of its poor counterfeit, the material misconception; and as we listen in our churches each Sunday to John's triumphant proclamation, "Beloved, now are we the sons of God," let us determine resolutely to hold in thought to that high ideal both for ourselves and for our neighbors.

We do not trouble about an ugly mask when we know that a child's face is underneath it; so when the mask of physical or moral ugliness is seen, we need to detach it from God's child and know that it is no part of him. The mask of headache or of measles, of selfishness or of impatience, of despotism or of disappointment and unsatisfied longings, is no part of man in God's image and likeness. Our work is to unsee error and know that the grass is green and the skies are blue, that God's beautiful universe is spiritual and perfect, and that joy abounds in the realm of the real. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 489) by Mrs. Eddy, we read: "The corporeal senses are the only source of evil or error. Christian Science shows them to be false, because matter has no sensation, and no organic construction can give it hearing and sight nor make it the medium of Mind. Outside the material sense of things, all is harmony."

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