Whenever faith and spiritual vision meet, a moment of divine Truth is experienced humanly, and healing occurs. Faith may be small as a mustard seed, vision but a quick glimpse of eternal spiritual facts; but when these two in greater or lesser measure come together, Truth is seen in that moment with irresistible healing effectiveness.
So it was in the Bible when Bartimaeus met Christ Jesus. Bartimaeus of Jericho, his earlier and later history unknown, flashes like a shooting star across a brief seven-verse passage of Mark's Gospel. Yet that short encounter provides a spiritual lesson for all mankind in all time (see Mark 10:46-52).
The world saw Bartimaeus as a poor blind beggar with a pitch on the Jericho to Jerusalem road. But when his moment came, Bartimaeus proved himself rich in faith. With the eye of faith he saw what must be done and did it. Bartimaeus heard a commotion, and someone told him Jesus of Nazareth was passing. So he called out, but not to "Jesus of Nazareth"; he called on Jesus as "Son of David." By this Messianic title he rightly identified Jesus as representing the Christ-power. Jesus sent for him and he came. When Jesus asked what he wanted, Bartimaeus replied without hesitation, "My sight." Then Jesus said, "Thy faith hath made thee whole." And Bartimaeus saw.
Here indeed was an encounter between faith and spiritual vision, spiritual perception, spiritual understanding. The faith of Bartimaeus recognized the presence of the Christ-power to heal; and the spiritual vision of Jesus saw in Bartimaeus, as in every individual, man's eternal spiritual nature, the perfect likeness of all-seeing divine intelligence, God. Healing inevitably ensued.
So it is today when a sick person hears of the Christ Science and reaches out for healing. This one may think or say he has no faith. Yet his very act of asking a Christian Science practitioner to pray for him or starting to read Mrs. Eddy's Science and Health with the thought of healing indicates some minimal embryo of faith. Then as he persists with this degree of faith and meets the spiritual vision that sees him in the perfect likeness of God, he is healed.
Sometimes the encounter between faith and spiritual vision takes place within the thought of a single individual. So it was when Mrs. Eddy's deep faith in God was illuminated by the swift glimpse of the allness of divine Spirit, which instantly healed her at the time of her discovering Christian Science. So it is whenever a solitary Christian Scientist turns to God in prayer. As faith and spiritual vision meet in his thought, he is healed.
What are this healing faith and spiritual vision? How do they work? How do we develop them?
Faith is a quality of human consciousness, a transitional quality on the road to heaven, to the full experiencing of spiritual reality. Until that point is reached, until faith is ready to yield to the final spiritual perception of all good, we need to cherish faith, to help it grow continually stronger and clearer.
To exercise faith requires that we acknowledge the power and presence of God, good, regardless of continuing material evidence. That we admit the possibility of being healed by divine power. That we consent to this healing. That we gratefully welcome every least glimmer, every least promise, of our freedom. Though dark clouds of trouble appear above and around, men or women of faith remain confident that there is always a brightness beyond and this brightness will be seen. And they recognize that whatever light reaches them in the meanwhile comes from that eternal undimmed source of light which is God.
Spiritual vision is something else. It is a faculty of spiritual consciousness. Its power and penetration derive from the all-seeing divine intelligence, which it individually reflects. When manifested humanly, it still remains unseparated from its divine source. However dark the material suggestions, it sees only the glory of Spirit and of Spirit's perfect creation.
This clear perception of spiritual glory enables human thought to identify and dismiss all phases of evil—to identify them and dismiss them as the nothing they are. Evil isn't something that must be proved nothing; it can only be proved nothing because it is already nothing. Spiritual vision, showing the infinitude of God, good, enables us to do this.
To exercise spiritual vision is not to picture better physical conditions, to visualize healthy physical organs and limbs or some harmonious material scene. Spiritual vision looks through the material picture, better or worse, to what the brightest human picture merely hints at. We may rightly cherish and fully enjoy the good that appears to human sight, but spiritual vision looks through this to spiritual identities, spiritual qualities and capacities, to the new heaven and new earth spoken of by John the Revelator.
This new heaven and earth have not just come into being; their newness is a quality of their eternal nature. And they are not up in the sky or over the horizon. What spiritual vision sees is a dimension of present living here and now; in fact, this spiritual reality is the only true dimension because there is nothing else. Science and Health asks, "Have you ever pictured this heaven and earth, inhabited by beings under the control of supreme wisdom?"Science and Health, p. 91. To do this is the function of spiritual vision, and this perception that reflects the goodness and power of all-seeing Spirit brings "healing to the human scene.
How can we develop faith and spiritual vision? By exercising them. As we acknowledge God's presence and power in all conditions and live by this acknowledgment, our faith deepens. As we acknowledge all-seeing Spirit as the one source of vision and as we allow this divinely inspired vision to occupy thought and guide action, our expression of spiritual vision becomes keener, more potent. Then faith and spiritual vision go forward together, bringing health and harmony to human lives.
