COMING up from the swamps, quicksands, and deserts of human belief, and starting on the inevitable journey toward the highlands of spiritual understanding, the student of Christian Science has much to learn aright. He certainly needs to understand the truth about God and man, and to know that his understanding of the truth established in consciousness by demonstrations of the Principle of Christian Science cannot be reversed.
In her text-book, Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy repeatedly points out that mortal mind is an inversion, a counterfeit, a reversal of the one infinite and perfect intelligence, the divine Mind, and that this transitory material sense not only claims to be true and good, but in its self-conceit it claims that it can reverse the action of eternal Mind just as rapidly as its demonstrations appear in human experience. Every denial of the omnipotence and omnipresence of this true Mind, every doubt or skepticism, every credence of the alleged power and reality of evil, is based on the belief that the human or mortal mind has reversed, or can reverse, the revelations and demonstrations of the one cause and creator, infinite Mind.
To know that every phase of erring mortal belief is a supposed reversal of the conditions or action of divine Mind; that it is the seeming purpose of the illusive mortal mind to reverse the work of divine Mind; and then to know, according to Christian Science, that every secret conspiracy and open effort to reverse the divine arbitraments and action are absolutely powerless, enables the student to bring out sure results today, and to advance steadily upward on the hillside climb from sense to Soul. Understanding that evil beliefs, whether ignorant, fraudulent, or malicious, never have and never can turn back aught that is good, firmly plants each forward footstep on the rock-based path of spiritual ascent. Only the disobedient and careless can appear to slip back, and this because they stray from the right path to follow the siren call of some illusive temptation. Looking through these specious attractions and realizing their nothingness and consequent impotence, the rightly directed student becomes master of each temptation, learns to protect his own work with a God-bestowed realization that "an improved belief cannot retrograde" (Science and Health, p. 442).
