"Let your light so shine" FAITH HOLMES HYERS          To the students of Christian Science there is special significance in the words, "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven;" for to them a light has shone into the darkness of old fears and stumbling faith. For them have been fulfilled the words spoken by Longfellow, A Lady with a lamp shall stand In the great history of the land. Mary Baker Eddy, the loved Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, has held aloft the lamp of spiritual understanding and illumined the Scriptures, lighting up the straight and narrow way which leads to Life.          The light of Christian Science is complete: it shows what God is, what man is, and what the relationship of God to man is. Ages of belief and blind faith in a manlike God, subject to wrath and revenge, have brought no surcease of sickness or sin. But the revelation that "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all;" that God is Love, knowing no slightest shade of hate or vengeance; that God is Mind, possessing no consciousness of evil; that God is Life, containing no element of decay or death, — this revelation brings immeasurable promise of deliverance from the bondage of sin, sickness, and death. The truth about God brings light to humanity as surely as the rays of the morning sun dissipate darkness. Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 504): "The rays of infinite Truth, when gathered into the focus of ideas, bring light instantaneously, whereas a thousand years of human doctrines, hypotheses, and vague conjectures emit no such effulgence."          The illumination of the Scriptures in regard to the nature of God, gained through the study of Christian Science, brings new light, as well, on the true nature of man. Accepting the declaration, "So God created man in his own image," and Paul's words, "We are also his offspring," we have Scriptural authority for believing that man is spiritual, intelligent, immortal, perfect as the creator is perfect. Putting on this new thought of man, day by day, "precept upon precept," we are enabled to put off the old sense of sinning, dying mortals, and so to rise in the scale of understanding of the real man. In the degree that we attain this understanding, we demonstrate harmony and health. As Mrs. Eddy writes on page 316 of Science and Health: "The, real man being linked by Science to his Maker, mortals need only turn from sin and lose sight of mortal selfhood to find Christ, the real man and his relation to God, and to recognize the divine sonship."          In the light of Truth, we see God and man, as Father-Mother and child, as Principle and idea, as active, divine Mind and the manifestation of divine intelligence, as Love and the expression of Love's tenderness, as Spirit and its reflection in spirituality. We are persuaded with Paul that "neither death, nor life, . . . nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, . . . shall be able to separate us from the love of God." We know there is no separation between Principle and the idea which demonstrates its quality and character; we know there can be no separation between the creator and His creation. God, who is omnipotent Love, could not leave His children helpless victims of sin and sickness; rather does He maintain the wholeness or health of His creation.          Having seen the light of the great revelation of Christian Science, we must watch that the light is not darkened or dimmed to the searcher for Truth by any thought, word, or deed of ours. It is a great responsibility, as well as privilege, to be classed as a Christian Scientist, — one who, our Leader says in Science and Health (p. 450), "has enlisted to lessen evil, disease, and death." It is for each one to watch and pray to keep his lamp of understanding trimmed and filled, that his light may shine clearly. If there is anyone who looks to us for cheer and hope, shall we disappoint his rightful expectancy by breathing to him a word of doubt, pessimism, or fear? If there is someone who uses our confidence as a safety-valve for his tales of woe and trouble, shall we confirm his self-pity by mere human sympathy for that which we know is unreal, or shall we meet his need with a gleam of light from our lamp of understanding, a flash of the truth that dispels the belief in the reality of evil as a flash of sunlight dissipates darkness? If one comes to us for healing of body or mind, will he find us with the lamp of illuminated truth, but with no oil (consecrated thought) therein, like the foolish virgins; or will he find us with oil and lamp ready to light the way to spiritual rejoicing?          The Christian Scientist knows that there is no spiritual, mental, or moral darkness; that in God and God's creation there is "no darkness at all." Ever mindful of the words of the Psalmist, "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path," the Christian Scientist will diligently search the Scriptures, that he may bear witness to the light.   "Let your light so shine" by Faith Holmes Hyers The Christian Science Journal, April, 1925

 

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