Los Angeles herald., 1910-06-12

In the ode on Intimations of I'm
mortality" Wadsworth touches soIpe-
thing that is shadowed forth, albeit
after almost unreliable fashion, in the
mental experience of many children.
While one would not always express II
just as Wadsworth has done. in his
implication that the child as mortal
comes forth from God, yet 1t is true
that intimations of spiritual truth do
often come to the pure child thought,
in an instructive searching after the
reality which underlies the veil OF
phenomena, and that these come less
often or with less persuasion to adults,
absorbed in the things of the world
The present writer recalls one sum-
mer night when to the wondering
| child standing alone under the stars
/ thoughts OF this rare quality came
thronging, hardly worded. Translat-
ed into language they ran somewhat
thus: ''I see the trees and the grass
and the flowers and the stars. 1 know
God made all these. They are natural;
they are the things that belong; they
are Gods things. They are always
Just like this year by year Then 1
see the house and the sidewalk. Now
| God did not make these; they are
made by people. They are not beau
tiful, either, like Gods things-they
are just ugly straight lines. They are
not alive and they wear out. But how,
! how could things like this get in among
Gods things? How ever did people
| happen to think up things that God
did not do first? 1 do not see how
things that are not Gods things could
come into the world at all"
WHAT DO I KNoW2
In that child consciousness a sense of
the incongruity of admitting that man
can do what God does not was search
ing for a word. The moment was one
of such authority that it remained clear
in memory during after years, recur-
ring again and again to the adult with
persistent questioning: What did L
know in that hour?" When at last
Christian Science came with it's har-
monious unfolding of the immortal
reality that past moment Of youthful
perception was explained. Somehow
had entered the reverent child heart,
lifted in love to the stars and taking
it's parable even as Jesus did from the
natural world, some intimations of the
enduring, the divine The child knew
then, though she had never been taught
it, that nothing can in actuality come
into a world that expresses ever
/ present infinite power except the direct
manifestations of that power. All must
express His beauty and permanence.
This is not to say, as maturer< vision
| reveals, that man-made things where
in an ideal perfection is sought may
not also hint the real beauty and
| power of divine creation, nor that a
rose seen as matter is more divine
! than any other form of matter But
the childlike thought discerned in a
degree what Jesus meant when he said
| that Solomon in all his glory was not
arrayed like the lily. That is, exquis'
ite fabrics and polished gems are less
| beautiful to the seeing eye than the
lily which, appearing without mans
| intervention, is a better type of the
| divine, spontaneous, original creation.
| Flowers and stars convey besides the
| idea of beauty the idea of perennial
| neWness or Of unchanging existence.
| The products of mans art seem to
| have beginning and ending and to de-
| pend on his will. What we call the
natural world is constantly renewed by
a power quite outside mortal ken. AS
| Jesus used bird and flower life to illus
trate his deep insistence upon the in
finite. one FatherhOOd, so this child
beheld through intuition in consider
ing the lilies, standing white and tall
beside her, that there is no source
for anything except in God
ALL THINGS IN SPIRIT
AS the reality of man is not discerred
materially but spiritually, so the real
identity of all things is in Spirit, in
the divine Mind, not in matter. A
little thought will show that we do
not know any man through the physl-
cal sense of him. To see a man, even
To hear him speak, is not to know him.
Some people live in daily association
who are more like strangers to each
other than some passing acquaintance
NAV be to either. This is evident that
our understanding of mans thought
is our only knowledge of him, mental,
not a physical conception of him.
Christian Science merely asks us to go
a step farther and see that of all
which we think we know about any
man that which is Godlike, spiritual,
is the only reality of him. So with the
various expressions of creative thought
shadowed forth in the so-called nat
ural world what is Godlike in them
alone hints their truth or reality.
The beauty of the rose is Godliks
and will endure. SO far as we see a
rose as d decaying, destructible thing