A BELIEF in immortality and in our progressive unfoldment in respect to all that is desirable and that promotes happiness, is sufficient reason for persistent effort to find and apply the healing truth. The truth as to any existing thing, creation, or condition, must reveal it in its perfection. Healing, or to use another form of expression, salvation, is mankind's highest desire, which will be realized when the "kingdom of heaven" appears in consciousness. Salvation is never a need of that which expresses perfect truth. The truth as to anything expresses its source, purpose, action, and effect; therefore the truth as to man created as the idea and image of God must express a perfect image of the creator. If we do not see and realize man as such, it is an error of perception, a false sense of man. Mortals are not free, because they do not know the truth. If God is good, and God is the creator of all things,—the All-in-all of all-inclusive reality,—then all that in fact has real existence is good, God expressed. Belief in evil therefore comes from a false sense of existence.
Heaven has been defined as a condition of consciousness, and it is clear that with our present beliefs we have not as yet attained a perfect realization of the kingdom of heaven within us. No question presented to suffering humanity is so important as this, "What shall I do to be saved?" Jesus' saying, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free," indicates that right education, the unfoldment of the consciousness of the truth, presents the only way of salvation. Salvation and redemption is therefore a mental process through which knowledge of the truth is attained, and error and the effect of error destroyed.
Humanity has suffered through the ages. Sin, sickness, and death have seemed realities of existence. Trouble, worry, weariness, and pain have been ever present as depressing and destructive influences which have made life a burden that at times seemed unbearable, and to escape which death has been awaited as a means of hoped for release from the ills to which flesh seems heir. Through all these years, during which evil and misery have seemed to be the heritage of man, brave and self-sacrificing men and women have made the attempt to mitigate and alleviate human suffering their life-work. Have they succeeded? and if not, why? Is it because the healing truth has not been understood? Is it because, to sense, error has been believed to be true? Does this saying of Jesus, "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you," furnish an explanation?
