To learn about our true identity or condition, it's important that we look into the right mirror. The mirror of selfishly preoccupied thought will give back a distorted picture; the mirror of medical beliefs will delineate morbid physical symptoms; the mirror of scholastic theology will reflect outworn theories of mankind's conception in sin and liability to sin; the mirror of worldliness will outline sensual social patterns.
Peering with hope or fear into such mortally mental reflectors, we may begin believing what we see and adjusting our concept of life, happiness, or health to their pictures, which draw us into the murky depths of materiality.
Only the mirror of Christian Science gives back the perfect reflection of the perfect original, God, and the alert Christian Scientist is diligent in turning to it. One way he does this is through thoughtful, inspired study of the Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly. In this lesson the clear picture of man as the individualized expression of eternal Life shines in all its radiancy. To turn away from the Lesson-Sermon, using as an excuse the demands of home, business, school, social activities, or to read it absent-mindedly or passively, with little or no effort to put its truths into practice, tends to cloud our spiritual vision and thereby cloud our view of ourselves and others. James wrote: "If any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed."James 1: 23-25;
