WHEN John the Baptist, crying in the wilderness of human uncertainty and confusion, prophesied the great mission of the Messiah, he strongly stressed the clear-cut distinction between righteousness and sin, good and evil, which was to be revealed. In the third chapter of Luke he is recorded as having spoken of one who should follow him as one "mightier than I ... whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable." Our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, has thrown helpful light on this passage in her spiritual definition of "fan" in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." Here she has written (p. 586): "Fan. Separator of fable from fact; that which gives action to thought."
The lesson of intelligently distinguishing between good and evil was one of the first lessons which Christ Jesus taught, and one of the most valuable. By simple parables, drawn from the homely surroundings of daily life, he taught mighty truths. He spoke of separating the tares from the wheat; the sheep from the goats. Figs, he reminded his hearers, could not come from thistles, nor grapes from thorns; a good tree could produce only good fruit; the "pearl of great price" was more precious than all other possessions; the parable of the net "that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind," showed the wisdom of discernment and separation. Clear, indeed, was his plain statement to the questioning Nicodemus, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit;" and the later statement, "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing."
That the importance of these precepts was appreciated by his followers is evidenced by their reëmphasis in the writings of the disciples and of the Apostle Paul. In his first epistle John said that the things of the world were not of the Father; James used a parable of the fig tree, and the excellent lesson of the fountain, which cannot send forth both sweet water and bitter. One of Paul's sayings, greatly valued by Christian Scientists, is, "We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal."
