IT is not possible for any one to overestimate the great change which comes over human consciousness when the spiritual sense of being replaces material belief about God and man. St. Paul indicates the change thus wrought when he says, in his first epistle to the Corinthians, "The last Adam was made a quickening spirit." It is very important for Christian Scientists to ponder deeply the "quickening" process involved in the spiritualization of thought to which reference is repeatedly made in the Old and New Testaments. The psalmist says, "My soul [sense] cleaveth unto the dust: quicken thou me according to thy word." In Isaiah we are told respecting the one upon whom the spirit of the Lord shall rest, that it "shall make him of quick understanding," and that it will give him "the spirit of counsel and might." Paul tells us that the spirit shall quicken even our mortal bodies, until we shall no longer "live after the flesh," for this is not living at all in the true sense, but is only a false sense of existence darkened by the fear of evil and "the shadow of death."
All who come into Christian Science are more or less conscious of the quickening power of Spirit and spiritual law. With the physical healing comes a wonderful sense of the surging tides of life which bespeak the one Life that sustains and governs the universe and man, the Life that is Love and Truth. The one thus healed takes a deep breath of reality and says with glad surprise, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." When, however, he proceeds to express his newly awakened sense of the spiritual energies which can never be exhausted, since they are in and of God, his friends who still believe in the narrow limits of asserted material law think that he is a mad enthusiast who needs to be restrained. They quite forget that the restrictions of material belief had so narrowed his sense of existence that he was forced to seek freedom from imprisonment in a sick body, and that when he found it in the truth which Christ Jesus said makes free, he felt bound to express it in every way. At this point the student of Christian Science needs to remember that he has not himself alone to think of, that we are (to quote St. Paul again) "a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men," to which he added, "We are fools for Christ's sake;" yet it was Paul who said that the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God.
Here the student should remember that his case rests upon demonstration, that he must prove he is working according to law, —God's law, hence spiritual law. He must also show that Christian Science is far removed from superstition or blind faith, —that it never encourages a careless disregard of present human conditions, but instead shows a quickened recognition of human need and the surest way of meeting it. Our revered Leader says (Science and Health, p. 168): "I have discerned disease in the human mind, and recognized the patient's fear of it, months before the so-called disease made its appearance in the body. Disease being a belief, a latent illusion of mortal mind, the sensation would not appear if the error of belief was met and destroyed by truth." The possession of such keen discernment does not imply any delving into the mysteries of material diagnosis, but rather evidences an intense spirituality which detects error and knows how to correct it, much as the advanced mathematician or musician detects the slightest flaw in a pupil's performance because of his own perfect knowledge of the subject involved. It also follows that with the spiritual quickening there comes a greater demand for both moral and physical purity than was ever before experienced. External cleanliness is no longer assented to from fear of disease, but because the higher nature demands the purification of everything within the radius of thought.
