SOMETIMES a student of Christian Science, in trying to solve a problem or to demonstrate over a seeming inharmony in his affairs, finds it difficult to realize the truth which he so assiduously declares and knows. Though this is undoubtedly due to a lack of spiritual perception, it sometimes happens that the stumbling-block is removed by a close analysis of the situation.
The writer distinctly remembers how for a long time she had a hazy concept of the meaning of the word reflection, and a problem which had remained unsolved in her experience for two years vanished as the larger significance of this word dawned upon her. The revelation showed that she had unconsciously been nourishing a sense of aloofness and separateness from God. Delving deeper into consciousness for the root of this error, she found that this sense of separateness was congenital to mortals whose insistence on the "I" of material selfhood constituted their whole claim to existence. "I did this," "I want this," "I made this," "I think thus," is the dominant thought which seems to separate men from God, "the adamant of error,—self-will, self-justification, and self-love,—which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death," as Mrs. Eddy says on page 242 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures."
"He that overcometh shall inherit all things," said the revelator; yet this false sense of an independent selfhood can be overcome only in proportion as the true sense of being unfolds in consciousness; and it was just here that the study of the word reflection did so much for the writer. "The Divine Being must be reflected by man" (Science and Health, p. 3). In other words, man must not try to do anything of himself or imagine that he is so doing. Reflection is defined as "turning or sending back;" "an image given back from a reflecting surface." Mrs. Eddy compares man's reflection of God to an image in the mirror. The image in the mirror has no independent action; it simply "gives back" each motion or expression of the original.
