THAT it is possible to be in another's presence without being in any vital sense aware of it is made evident in the round of our daily experiences, in which it so often happens that after we have been introduced to persons we frequently see them,—on the street, in church, in the street car, and almost at every turn, as it seems,—often enough, indeed, to leave no doubt in our minds that we have been daily seeing these same people, prior to the introduction, but with no consciousness of the fact, our minds being an absolute blank as to their existence up to the time they were emphasized to our notice by the formal acquaintance with them.
Mankind has adown the ages been walking with an unseen presence, who, although "closer than breathing" and the very best friend we have, has in too many instances gone all along the way with us unrecognized and unknown. That our redemption and salvation depend upon our ultimate recognition of and intimate acquaintance with this faithful though unappreciated friend, makes it pitiful that there is so little knowledge of the fact that such a presence really accompanies each of us, and more pitiful still the fact that those of us who have had some intimation of his journeying with us, have as yet made so little effort to clear our vision for a substantial recognition of what, when we come to "see him as he is," must be a divinely beautiful presence—the Christ, or God-man, into whose very being consciousness must sooner or later be assimilated, if we are to be saved from the bondage that attaches to a false sense of selfhood.
Christian Scientists have learned that salvation does not consist of something that is to come to us only in the distant future, but that it is something of daily, hourly attainment through the discovery and knowledge of and a growing acquaintance with the good, the beautiful, the true, the divine in individual being — a too often entirely unseen presence, which is ever with us and with each of our fellow-creatures. This better selfhood is the true, the real, the primal identity or individuality in each of us, and in everything of which we think as a part of the universe. It is ever present, if we would but see it, — as we are privileged to see it, in the measure that we do not permit ourselves to know or see any other (asserted) selfhood or identity, since this process of not permitting ourselves to be conscious of the opposite of good, not permitting ourselves to take account of evil, is the only means of acquaintance with the divine in individual or universal being.
