One beautiful day late in the evening a Christian Scientist and his wife were traveling by plane across a desert. From the height at which they were moving, objects on the ground seemed almost indistinguishable, but here and there a particular feature could be discerned in the gathering dusk. Suddenly the wife nudged her husband and pointed towards the horizon, to a beautiful blue lake nestling beneath a rose-colored mountain. The contrast of azure and rose was magnificent; it was like a lovely landscape set in a somber frame. For a few moments they watched it with breathless pleasure, until suddenly, in the changing glow of the sunset, lake and mountain disappeared from view—nothing remained but a dark and weary waste of sand and shadows.
This mirage, for so it was, captivated the imagination for a moment, but it included nothing real or permanent. It hinted at a rose-colored mountain towering above an azure lake, but this landscape of lake and mountain as viewed by the two travelers was only a myth! It had no substance, no stability, no permanence. Had the travelers descended together from their plane and endeavored to walk by the lake or ascend the mountain, they would have found nothing but a wilderness of sand. Disappointment and disillusionment would then have taken the place of pleasurable anticipation.
In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 300), "The mirage, which makes trees and cities seem to be where they are not, illustrates the illusion of material man, who cannot be the image of God."
