One of the perplexing problems to an eager young student in Christian Science is the refusal of mortal mind to see anything except matter and its modes, and its refusal to reason from any other premise. When Jesus said, "They seeing see not; and hearing they hear not," he was confronted with the same phase of human blindness that to-day his followers encounter. The idea of a huge bulk of an earth existing in space seems in too many cases not to be questioned by the average human intellect. Trees, mountains, oceans, and all material phenomena are simply taken for granted; yet this bold claim should startle thought and cause at least some effort toward paining a clearer understanding. The failure to see the truth seems all the more inconsistent when we behold, now that Christian Science has appeared, how readily the child thought grasps "the deep things of God": Unity of Good, p. 13). We should greatly rejoice that in our time it is possible for so many children to begin life freed from the warped vision which so often hampers existence at the very outset.
Out of a far-away hour the writer recalls a small face, with wide eyes searching land and sky, a mere mite of humanity, but one in whom the logic of reasoning was stirring. The child had recently learned from her mother that God made "heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is," and in silence she was surveying as far as her horizon would permit, the immense fact. Long the slender figure stood and gazed upon the earth and trees and mountain, and raised her wondering glance to the expanse of heaven, blue and amazingly deep and distant, to the sun in its unmatched splendor. Then, when the immensity of the idea could no longer be borne, when the small budding thought seemed crushed before so momentous a problem, the litthe one turned swiftly toward home, and fleet feet carried her back to her mother's side. "Where did God get the dirt to make the earth out of?" she demanded. "Where did He get the water and trees and mountains? Where did all these things come from?" The wonder is not that the question should have sprung from one so young, but rather that it should not be the question on every unenlightened tongue.
As it is with the mortal outlook upon creation, so it is in its attitude toward much of the daily proof of Christian Science, the steady growth of which would seem to demand positive attention from even the most unobserving thought. Mighty testimonies of the efficacy of Christian Science in all human affairs greet the world at every turn; yet how many pause and question how this healing, removed from material means, is possible if these discordant conditions are realities; how many face these momentous facts, as did the child, and demand to know the truth? In too many cases do mortals go on burdened with woe and perplexity, and sink at last under their ultimatum, despair, when an honest facing of existence in this enlightened age would bring them into ways and means of learning something of what life is and what it is for. Were it possible to look out on existence with a clearer vision, the world would behold on all sides the fact that Christian Science is giving its adherents a truer and freer life than they enjoyed before, or than is enjoyed by those uninstructed in this teaching.
