"LIFT UP YOUR EYES"

A Careful student of the Scriptures will observe that frequent mention is made of the lifting up of the eyes. We read that just prior to raising Lazarus from the dead Jesus lifted up his eyes; that before healing the man who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech Jesus looked up to heaven; and yet again, before feeding the multitude, he took the loaves and the fishes and looking up to heaven blessed and brake them. Christian Science shows that a deep significance is attached to this act of looking up to heaven or lifting up the eyes, which metaphysically understood indicates that thought is lifted above materiality.

In the Glossary to "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 586) Mrs. Eddy defines eyes as "spiritual discernment,—not material but mental," and this is precisely what must be lifted up or used. Had the Master lifted up merely his physical eyes at the tomb of Lazarus, he would have seen only what those around him were beholding, namely, evidences of death, sorrow, and limitation. But through spiritual discernment he could descry the man of God's creating—the man whom God made to reflect His glory and dominion. By reason of spiritual discernment he could say, "Lazarus, come forth," with the result that Lazarus came forth. Again, had Jesus at the time when he fed the vast multitude looked with only a material sense of sight at the few loaves and fishes put before him, he would have seen lack, hunger, fear, discord. What he did, however, was to look up to heaven, harmony, realizing God's ever operative law of peace and plenty which enabled him to demonstrate an abundant supply for all.

An instructor of mathematics looks over the problems of his pupils with his thought firmly fixed on the law of numbers, with his eyes, as it were, lifted up to this law. So clear is his apprehension of the laws relating to numbers that any mistake made by his pupils is quickly detected and corrected by him. He does not mistake a wrong solution for a right one, nor does he become confused or discouraged by reason of the mistakes made by the pupils. In like manner Jesus' understanding of God, the Principle of being, was so clear that he could demonstrate the right solution of life's problems to be harmony based on spiritual law. Thus, when he was confronted by the mistakes of mortals, as evidenced by sin, disease, or death, he could correct these mistakes. With his eyes lifted up to the spiritual fact of God's omnipotence and the spiritual creation of which we read in the first chapter of Genesis, wherein God saw all He had made and "behold, it was very good," Jesus 'never became confused nor discouraged by sense evidence. He understood every discord to be the result of ignorance or misapprehension of spiritual law and knew that it could be corrected by a right apprehension of Truth.