The Exalted Point of View

E. STUART WELLS

Frequently one hears the statement, "It depends on your point of view," as a rationalization for action or the lack, of action. In every human situation that is presented to him, the Christian Scientist learns to turn to God. To know that man is the perfect reflection of God and that the universe is one harmonious whole— spiritual rather than material—is to attain the Godlike view. By rejecting material appearances as unreal, the Christian Scientist gains a diviner point of view.

The effects of a higher view were illustrated to the writer when he and his family were camping in Switzerland at the foot of rugged mountain peaks which thrust upward from the shore of a lake. Sitting by the lake, the family could see two red cars of a cog railway puffing in and out of apertures on the opposite cliffs on their way to a higher and more remote peak.

One sunny morning the family joined other sightseers to take the trip on the railway up the mountain. Thrill after thrill rewarded them as the beauty of the valley below unfolded. More striking and thought-provoking was the appearance of those rugged peaks that had seemed to dominate the valley campsite. As the train went up the mountain, these appeared to diminish in size until the family wondered how they could have seemed so awesome.

Just as in the valley these towering crags had seemed almost threatening, so in difficult times one's human problems loom large and forbidding.

When one is lifted above his immediate point of observation and reaches the high peaks of consecration, his perspective, his point of view, is changed. His problems no longer seem forbidding; he doesn't flee from them or ignore them. He need go nowhere physically to find his solutions, for Jesus said, "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you."^{Luke 17:20, 21;}

Nor does this exaltation of thought change any facts; it merely alters one's way of looking at them. One applies to one's daily experiences the truths learned through study of the Bible and of Christian Science, seeing perfection right where imperfection seems to be. He holds to this view whatever the senses tell him about any situation or human being within their range. He recognizes too that the solution of problems advances the process of exaltation, even as climbing the foothills gives one access to the higher peaks.

Said Isaiah, "It shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it."^{Isa. 2:2;} The Christian Scientist persists in the process of exalting his own consciousness, reaching for that glimpse of divine consciousness which will reveal the infinity and eternity in which he really exists.

Mrs. Eddy speaks of the exalted view thus: "One moment of divine consciousness, or the spiritual understanding of Life and Love, is a foretaste of eternity. This exalted view, obtained and retained when the Science of being is understood, would bridge over with life discerned spiritually the interval of death, and man would be in the full consciousness of his immortality and eternal harmony, where sin, sickness, and death are unknown."^{Science and Health, p. 598.}

The exalted point of view is essential in the Christian Scientist's daily experience of the kingdom of God, his expression of the true nature of man, and gives new meaning to the statement, "It depends on your point of view."

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