Who has not at some time, while visiting a mountain resort, had the experience of waking early in the morning and discovering that the impressive view has apparently become nonexistent because of heavy mists and low-hanging clouds? One might be tempted to believe that the misty grayness is a positive, permanent fact. But presently there appears a burst of sunlight. Gradually, as the mists disperse, the grandeur of the scene is again revealed. This is an entirely natural occurrence and easily explained by atmospheric conditions.
The word "mist" is defined in part as "anything which dims or darkens and obscures, blurs, or intercepts vision, physical or mental; . . . uncertainty, a state of doubt." The Scriptures refer to a mist in the second chapter of Genesis, where a false material view is presented which obscures the spiritually inspired record of God's perfect and complete creation, as given in the first chapter. We read, "But there went up a mist from the earth." What could such a mist be but mortal illusion, the false material sense of God's perfect spiritual creation? Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 205), "Befogged in error (the error of believing that matter can be intelligent for good or evil), we can catch clear glimpses of God only as the mists disperse, or as they melt into such thinness that we perceive the divine image in some word or deed which indicates the true idea,—the supremacy and reality of good, the nothingness and unreality of evil."
"But," one may say, "there is no doubt or illusion in regard to my suffering; it is a definite actuality." We will agree that mortal mind naturally argues for the reality of error and for every discordant thought. But Christian Science enables one to discern the spiritual man's perfection through the light of Truth, which penetrates and disperses the vaporous pretensions of error. Not being actual, these pretensions are destined to disappear into nothingness. In the chapter entitled "Animal Magnetism Unmasked" (ibid., p. 103) Mrs. Eddy has written, "Mind-science is wholly separate from any half-way impertinent knowledge, because Mind-science is of God and demonstrates the divine Principle, working out the purposes of good only."
