Hanging on a wall of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts is the large canvas by Paul Gauguin with the long title, "D'où venons nous? Que sommes nous? Où allonsnous?" (Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?) It shows groups of islanders Gauguin painted in Tahiti. They are in different poses indicating contemplation, wonderment, resignation.
Gauguin, who was not a happy man at the time he painted this canvas, wrote of one figure in it, "An enormous crouching figure . . . raises its arms into the air and looks in amazement upon [those] who dare to think of their fate." A study of Gauguin says of the vivid painting, "Is it then an answer to those three questions written on the edge of the canvas? No. It is rather the questions themselves. For it is the study of them which makes up human life." French Painters and Paintings from the Fourteenth Century to Post-Impressionism, ed. Gerd Muehsam (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1970), pp. 548, 551;
Although Christian Science was discovered more than a hundred years ago and the headquarters of the Church promulgating this religion is not far from this museum, many who gaze at this painting each year don't know that Christian Science offers an answer to these questions. Christian Science is often most familiar to people as a religion that shows how to heal physical ills through prayer alone. But it is also a religion that gives a sure basis from which to find and carry out one's lifework, a reason for following active, purposeful careers, and an assuring answer to the question of man's destiny. When followed faithfully, it transforms human life from preoccupation with asking questions similar to Gauguin's into an active demonstration of the answers to them.
