I am the Light of the World

Published February 4, 1928, by Alice McCray Merriell

Few of us escape the experience now and then of human conditions in which we seem to arrive at an impasse, with no visible right solution. Often the world's opinion of our problem influences our thinking to such a degree that for a time we forget how shifting and undependable are the opinions of men in the light of the understanding of the all-knowing divine Mind. But we always find that the confusion clears away when this understanding is allowed to shine directly upon the problem.

In John's Gospel the beloved disciple relates the healing by our Master of one who had been born blind. Surely this blindness must have seemed to him who had borne it a condition from which there was little or no hope of freedom; for, as he afterward said, "Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind." As he sat and begged, however, "Jesus passed by;" and in a few moments his eyes were opened, notwithstanding that the general human belief about the impossibility of healing total blindness was still unchanged. "Jesus passed by." On pages 476 and 477 of our textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy explains why his passing by was so often attended by marvels. She writes, "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick."

There may have been other blind men in the paths the Master trod, some of whom were not healed; but the willingness to believe that he might be healed by the power of Spirit, however new and strange it seemed to him, opened the way for the light to shine in this one's consciousness. Also, he obeyed without question the simple demands of the Master, although to mortal sense they may have seemed quite unnecessary. After he had received his sight, he repeated the facts of his healing when he was questioned; and his steadfastness was rewarded by the commendation of Jesus: "Thou hast both seen him [the Son of God], and it is he that talketh with thee." Jesus thus made it plain that the Son of God, the Christ, is the perfect concept of man in God's image. What encouragement this must have afforded to his listener to rise to a higher understanding of his own rightful place in God's kingdom!

The neighbors, however, were apparently not so ready to believe. They at first doubted his identity; and the Pharisees, even after it had been established beyond argument, turned their hatred of the truth upon the healer: "This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the sabbath day.... Give God the praise: we know that this man is a sinner.... We know that God spake unto Moses: as for this fellow, we know not from whence he is."

The world still uses the same arguments. Human opinion, holding to traditional belief in the human history of Jesus, refuses to accept the truth which he labored to make clear to mankind. It says to-day: Christian Scientists emphasize healing more than faith in God; or, Christian Scientists claim to heal sickness and sin, when we know that God alone can do that; or, Jesus performed his miracles by a special dispensation, to prove his divine authority.

Our beloved Leader proved in her life-practice and in her teaching that these opinions of mortals contain no more of eternal truth than did the beliefs of those who refused long ago to acknowledge Jesus' power to heal by Spirit. The specific erroneous beliefs which mortals applied to his healing of the one who was born blind are not yet outgrown. All human opinions are subject to frequent change, as mankind outgrows its superstition and ignorance; but divine Truth, as revealed in Christian Science, is immutable, and may always be proved by healing and regeneration.

The power of the Christ, Truth, manifested in the healing by Jesus of the one born blind, remains, unchanged by changing beliefs, giving enduring proofs that the "correct view of man," when it is understood and practiced, does heal, even so-called incurable disease. The Christ, Truth, is forever present to heal and to save; and as we learn in Christian Science to think according to the pattern of the one perfect Mind, and leave behind us the false patterns of human opinion, we find it veritably "the light of the world."