Nathaniel Hawthorne tells the story of a little boy who during his childhood gazed daily at a gigantic human face carved by nature in a granite cliff dominating his town. There was a prophecy which said that some day in that region one would arise possessing the very characteristics of this face, one who would spread blessings everywhere by exemplifying great virtues. This prediction impressed the boy to the extent that he loved to go apart and gaze at the stone face. As he grew older he thought much about the virtues it expressed and how they would bless the countryside. The more he looked at the face the more he loved it. Little by little he began to resemble it, so much so that when he was old his friends and neighbors were greatly moved to discover that the man of prophecy was among them.
In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy compares the different ideals of two artists. Then she asks (p. 360): "Dear reader, which mind-picture or externalized thought shall be real to you,—the material or the spiritual? Both you cannot have. You are bringing out your own ideal. This ideal is either temporal or eternal. Either Spirit or matter is your model.'"
Our thought is always busy, and the nature of our thought habits determines our experience in life. If our beliefs are riveted to the notion that reality is both physical and spiritual, we shall continue to swing between matter and Spirit and to manifest at one time the higher joys of Spirit and at another the pleasures and ills of the flesh. But if we concern our thought more and more with man as the image and likeness of God, our vision widens. The image becomes clearer to us as we understand better the nature of God, the one creator, and reflect to a greater degree the power and dominion which He has given the man He created. In fact, the model which is present in our thought, is externalized. Jesus presented the perfect ideal, or Christ, because he maintained his spiritual consciousness of reality by the silencing of mortal mind. One hears and sees only the true when the material senses are silent. Knowing that mortal mind and matter are one, our Leader says (ibid., p. 77), "Error brings its own self-destruction both here and hereafter, for mortal mind creates its own physical conditions."
