No more fitting illustration of separating the precious from the vile comes to thought than that of the refining whereby certain metals come forth separated from impurities mainly by the influence of the intense heat to which the ore is subjected.
In order that he might make plain to his listeners the teaching of the kingdom of heaven within, Jesus often used the illustration of separation. In the parables of the tares and the wheat, the sheep and the goats, and in many other instances, the Master elaborated the fact that the kingdom of heaven is the kingdom of God, Spirit, not of matter, and is gained only by a process of rejecting materiality and laying hold of spiritual reality.
The promises set forth in the Bible are usually accompanied by some condition, as in Jeremiah, where we read, "If thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth," thus indicating that if one is to express the truth, he must first separate the false from the true in his thinking. When John the Baptist foretold the mission of Christ Jesus he used the illustration of the fan, to show that Jesus' work would be a separating, purifying work, saying, his "fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 586) Mrs. Eddy thus defines "fan": "Separator of fable from fact; that which gives action to thought."
