Students of Christian Science often find in the words of poets hints of the great truths declared by Mrs. Eddy. These beautiful lines by Alfred Noyes show the present trend of thought to be away from the material and toward the spiritual: —
This outer world is but the pictured scroll
Of worlds within the soul,—
A coloured chart, a blazoned missal-book
Whereon who rightly look
May spell the splendours with their mortal eyes
And steer to Paradise.
To many of us the word "firmament" is a very big word with a somewhat vague meaning. It is a word derived from the Latin of the Vulgate firmamentum (firmare, to make firm) and denotes the expanse of the sky overhead. The Greek of the Septuagint uses a word meaning solid, a foundation, no doubt because in ancient Hebrew astronomy the hollow vault of the heavens above us was supposed to be solid, and the stars fixed in it as fruit in a cake. Modern investigation alone has decided that it is an atmosphere stretching upward for a certain number of miles and then merging into the unknown of infinite space.
