UNDER the marginal heading "Mind's true camera," on page 264 of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy makes the following illuminating statement: "Mortals must look beyond fading, finite forms, if they would gain the true sense of things." Then she puts the pertinent question, "Where shall the gaze rest but in the unsearchable realm of Mind?" There is no place where one's gaze can permanently rest except in the realm of infinite Mind, for all else is finite and transitory. When one's thoughts are centered upon the objects of time and sense, they are not dwelling in absolute Truth but in the suppositional world of ever-changing human concepts.
Again our Leader writes under the caption "Inverted images and ideas" (Science and Health, p. 301), "Delusion, sin, disease, and death arise from the false testimony of material sense, which, from a supposed standpoint outside the focal distance of infinite Spirit, presents an inverted image of Mind and substance with everything turned upside down." This passage uncovers the original sin or primary error of belief that life and intelligence are in matter, which belief, when accepted, develops a chain of resultant errors all of which would continue to multiply indefinitely, if the error in premise were not detected and destroyed.
When it is recognized that one's state of consciousness is the lens through which one beholds all things, the first step has been taken in the direction of correcting the false sense of self and gaining the right concept of self; for when looked at through the lens of the so-called human mind mankind seems to have all the defects of that imperfect medium. Christ Jesus made this plain when he said, "First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."
