HUMANITY'S supreme need is to understand God;and by applying this understanding in daily life, every problem may be solved. God is not physically manifest, hence the great verities of Spirit can only reach us spiritually, through the medium of His own ideas. These true ideas constitute life, health, and the perfection of being, independently of matter. God, divine Mind, is ever present with His ideas; indeed, these ideas are His very presence, for we read not only that "the Word was with God," but further that "the Word was God." This Word of God inherently possesses divine dominion, health, joy, power. It is Immanuel, or "God with us."
We can distinguish between a false belief and a true idea by gaging the measure of discord or of harmony which is brought to the one who entertains either. Too often false beliefs rob us of the corresponding blessings which are just at hand, these being merely hidden by the false mental condition of the moment. Every divine idea, true to its source, brings with it some characteristic of Truth, such as vigor, alertness, tenderness, health, and peace of mind and body. There can be no bodily peace without peace of mind. One who would gain health and moral freedom through Christian Science must be prepared to face out the question of his wrong thinking resolutely. He must be willing to recognize that sin and suffering are always due to some phase of wrong thinking, and if he is wise, he will set himself to see creation as God sees it, for then truly he will behold it for the first time. Then also the promise awaits him, "Thou shalt not see evil any more."
Christian Science heals sickness by teaching mortals to cease their wrestling with flesh and blood and begin to combat false belief. The standard of the divine Mind establishes the distinction between what is true and what is false, and when honored it begets that control of thought which in turn harmoniously controls the bodily condition. Thus, in the measure of our willingness to learn, God's ideas lovingly and wisely show us how to begin to cast down imaginations, and to bring "into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." We can find God, and man's true selfhood, in no other way save through the medium of right ideas; and the very first thing we have to do is to let go of false beliefs, rather than allow them to hug us and mentally harass us, as they are prone to do, until we deal with them through the energy of those divine ideas which never slumber or sleep. In proportion as our thoughts are becoming spiritual in their nature, so we are touching the hem of eternal life; but if our consciousness still harbors beliefs of fear, anger, resentment, self-pity, these are destructive and temporal, and rob us of the joy of feeling the divine Word within us, though it is always there, for evil never yet actually displaced the true and the good.
