The problem before all research, as it struggles through the dark, foreboding jungle of mortal belief, is Reality. When limited sense is aroused by the strong claims of Christian Science, it says if a certain disease is not real, it expresses a woful ignorance as to what Reality is.
There is, indeed, a certain manifestation of mortal sense, true to that sense, but if the disease can be healed it shows the first state to be unreal. Why? Because Reality is unchangeable fact. If this said disease is a permanent fact, it is always to be a disease; and, a correlative thought under this condition of permanency, it always has been a disease without a beginning. What is the conclusion? If the disease had a beginning, it also has an ending. Therefore, it is temporal, lacking true basis, for Reality is Eternity itself.
The Real has the only power that can affect and govern man, and are we taking too high a standard when we endeavor to understand, with the author of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," that "The realm of the real is spiritual"? (p. 173). But why not also material? Let us see. The grand old Book speaks to us, and it whispers that "things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." God as the first cause must also be the last cause or Reality, and He being omnipotent, can matter be involved within Spirit? So, if God is eternal, He must make all things like to Himself.
"Sickness, sin, and death are the realities of human belief. Life, Truth, and Love are the realities of Spirit, which dawn in faith, and glow full-orbed in the understanding" (Science and Health, p. 193).
Let not at this point come in the deplorable use of that strong argument to pin erring conclusion to, and say, "But with God all things are possible." Indeed it is so, but there is one exception that can be safely taken to this axiom, and that is that God can never be other than Himself, or make aught unlike to Himself. There is but this one impossibility with our Father: God is Reality, Truth, and the spiritual is the Real.
Many, perhaps, claim that such handling of sacred things is sacrilege, but which is the sacrilege, the endeavor to realize the "our Father," or to stand without the temple and vainly opinionate upon the beauties within?
In the courts of our land the "real pertains to things fixed, permanent, or unmovable." Is it wise for our welfare, therefore, to claim more for the conditions of matter, than for the harmonies of God?
The world claims to know Reality, but does it, if we claim Reality is harmony and are to judge by the harvest? Reality to be permanent must be self-existent, and to be so, must be constructive or harmonious; discord is destructive.
Now, take a quick survey of the present condition of a mortal's world, of its tares, and can it be said that it has reached harmonious Reality, when it holds its head and swallows seas of drugs to destroy what it most emphatically claims to be real? The world's headache is only cognizable to that false sense of Reality, for it displays its utter disbelief in its permanency when it endeavors to work a cure or has claimed to have so done.
Christian Scientists only use the word "real" in its highest import, and refer to the eternal truths of God. Take the physician administering the drug; he does not believe that the illness under treatment is everlasting and unchangeable, or he would never begin such an impossiblity.
Reader, the teachings of Christian Science freely admit that error is a (seeming) fact to the sufferer, but that in the sight of Truth, it is as a passing shadow. The generally educated thought has been, that Reality accepts disorder as well as order. Science and revelation prove the real to be only the realm of order and the eternal verities.
Sons of men, awake! throw off the clothes of sense, bathe in this river of Life, then, put on the robes of Soul, and behold the sons of God.
There are two things for live men and women to do: to receive from God, and to give out to their fellows. One cannot be done without the other. No fruit, without the drinking of sunshine. No true tasting of the sunshine that is not gathering itself towards the ripening of fruit.
