For many years part of my family's affairs have been looked after by a firm who call themselves either lawyers or solicitors according to the part of the English speaking world they are addressing at the moment. One of the early members of this firm, who was a very enlightened Christian and a devout churchman, had a favorite saying: "It's only a hair's breadth which hides the sun from us." It was the joy of this person's life to make this hair's breadth as small as he could, both for himself and for the large circle of his family, friends, acquaintances, and clients.
Although a person may express the best human qualities, such as joy, compassion, honesty, and affection, he may still, albeit unconsciously, yearn for a more complete relationship with God, good. It was precisely this complete unity of God and man that Christ Jesus came to show to humanity by his words and works. More recently Christian Science has explained how nothing can obstruct, even by a hair's breadth, the essential unity of God and man. This explanation is coordinate with the inspired Word of the Bible, and particularly with the first chapter of Genesis, where we read, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." Gen. 1:27; Elsewhere in this chapter we learn that God gave man dominion and that "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." v. 31;
According to the Bible and Christian Science, the unity of man and God is scientifically true, but the concept that the two are separated is widely held by humanity to be a fact. In this confused sense of separation exist all the supposed troubles and illnesses of mankind, and over the ages enlightened individuals have tried to bridge the gap by letting in the light as far as they have seen it. There has always remained, however, the hair's breadth of division my friend was continually trying to minimize. Christian Science shows us that even the slightest sense of division can be eliminated, for in a paragraph in Science and Health opposite the marginal heading "Goodness transparent" is Mrs. Eddy's statement, "The manifestation of God through mortals is as light passing through the window pane." She continues farther on in the same paragraph: "The mortal mind through which Truth appears most vividly is that one which has lost much materiality—much error—in order to become a better transparency for Truth. Then, like a cloud melting into thin vapor, it no longer hides the sun." Science and Health, p. 295; In fact, at this point there is recognized to be not even a hair's breadth of division.
