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.
The direct connection between wrong thinking and dying, and right thinking and living, is conveyed by the apostle Paul when he says that "to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." We should not accord any reality to wrong thoughts, for if we do, we shall have difficulty in getting rid of them. When faced with some perplexity, let us ask ourselves these questions: Does the thought before me at this moment emanate from divine Truth, Life, or Love? Is it eternal? Is it Christlike? Does it conduce to carnality or spirituality? Is it a help or a hindrance to true, pure living? Thus we may prove that like begets like, and that as a man thinketh, so is he."
Again, in our progressive steps toward pure thinking, we need not add to our difficulties by perusing sensational journalism or cheap fiction, thus filling thought with discordant mental pictures. Another step in the right direction is the control of conversation. There is not one of us who has yet eliminated false belief, but we can every one of us be more watchful in checking its utterance, if we wish to do so. Every one of us can make a beginning if, when troubles seem to arise, we refrain from seeking relief through pouring out our woes to another, and instead visit some faithful friend, or student of Christian Science, who may disperse the cloud by speaking to us of heavenly things. Are we not more likely to rise above this temptation by faithfully turning to the truth, rather than by designedly impressing the false beliefs upon another with a view to gaining relief ourselves? Is not subtraction usually better than multiplication in such a case? It is true that we gladly share one another's burdens, but would not this divine method lighten the load for both? Sometimes the rehearsal of error takes so long that little time seems to be left for the truth to explain it away.
Here the question arises as to whether a Christian Science practitioner, whose duty and desire it is to keep thought clear in order that it may become the transparency through which God heals, is not sometimes regarded as the convenient dumping-ground for error. Could we not sometimes deal with the error in our own consciousness in the light of our understanding? Every one who has reached the point of detecting the falsity of a belief is also at the point where he can reverse it with truth, for it is truth that has shown him the falsity and will sustain him in his divine warfare against it.
Let us pause and ask ourselves whether we are sometimes caught ruminating over some recent public calamity, dwelling sensitively on some phase of cruelty, in other words, believing the evidences of corporeal sense, or whether we are helping to silence the pitiful wail of false belief by mentally maintaining the harmony of all creation, the chorus that arrested the attention of the shepherds centuries ago. At first, as we read, they were afraid;then the angel spoke reassuringly: "Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people." Their consciousness, opened to receive this truth, opened wider still, and so received the spiritual impression of "a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."
This is the inspired conception of God which is destined to lift humanity out of a sense of discord into harmony, heaven itself. Moreover, this chorus is perpetual, since "Love sends forth her primal and everlasting strain" (Science and Health, p.568), and we only seem deaf to it as a blind person seems blind to the light all about him. Did not the exiled disciple, alone on the island of Patmos, hear the same chorus when he records that he "heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ"? And is it not because Jesus perpetually listened to this chorus that he was able to banish the false visions of sin, disease, and death? This chorus expresses divine Love, and we can hear it only by echoing love in our lives.
Let us have done, therefore, with mental listening to accusations, to depreciatory thoughts, either of others or of ourselves, and listen for and communicate only harmony and truth, both silently and audibly. Unless we keep the ideal before us, we cannot advance toward it. Have we not a grand incentive to right thinking in the individual and universal fruitage already apparent to the world? Like the shepherds, the listeners of today are sometimes afraid when they hear of the growth and healing activities of Christian Science, and are inclined to think it "too good to be true." Should we not rather take the opposite position that evil is too bad to be true? Reassurance comes with proof, however, and every testimony meeting is heralding in that day when the whole earth will, as an old hymn so beautifully phrases it, "send back the song which now the angels sing."
How many of us who used to be sufferers and false witnesses now possess health and freedom as the reward for improvement in our methods of thought! How many sufferers have become songsters! Material sense most frequently finds something to bewail, but spiritual sense will, even in the darkest human experiences, discover something to rejoice over, some bright spot in the darkness. There is always the Christ-idea at hand to lift thought, to comfort and strengthen us if we listen for it. Jesus said that his sheep listened for the voice of their own shepherd, and would not follow a stranger, "for they know not the voice of strangers." So likewise should we turn a deaf ear to false thoughts and listen for those divine ideas that will lead us beside still waters.
Every one can progress in Christian Science who studies its literature systematically, in conjunction with the Bible, and then applies all that he understands. It is no help to us to accept Christian Science teaching theoretically and then ignore the demands which it makes upon us practically, for its conditions are bound up with its promises. Every condition of health and environment is in reality a mental condition externalized, and so the betterment of every condition comes through that mental regeneration which so richly rewards the student of Christian Science. Every one taking up this study goes through much the same experience. The new standard of thinking exposes the tangle of his own thoughts, and at first he may feel a little bewildered. Then the work of sifting courageously begins, and with earnestness of purpose he sets to work to find his unity with good through good thinking, and link by link, thought by thought, the bond between him and the divine Mind grows, until he can learn to say with the Wayshower, "I and my Father are one."
Only through true thinking can one lay claim to any connection with Christ, the Son of God, or manifestation of divine Mind. True thinking reveals the true sonship. The ideas of God, the Word of God, can be apprehended in ever increasing measure by the pure in heart; but in order to accomplish this, let us note that the promise of protection is only given to him "that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shut-teth his eyes from seeing evil." Since God is Mind, His creation is the reflection of His consciousness, and ever perfect and complete in Him. He sustains every idea in creation mentally, and it is in divine Mind that we find every need supplied; divine Mind is ours in proportion as we reflect it. It is only by means of right ideas, consciously entertained and pondered, that human beings can know and demonstrate the spiritual power and presence of God.
Divine Mind is not apprehended by any one of the five corporeal senses, but despite these would-be deceivers, dominion over every sense of evil may be gained as we cling to our highest concept of God and of man, as the Hebrew captives and the prophet Daniel clung to their vision, thereby escaping the flames and the lions. He who in daily life clings to the scientific fact of the one perfect Mind, and who by degrees eliminates such thoughts as have no connection with this Mind, who lives, loves, thinks, and heals spiritually through the reflection of this Mind's ideas, can never fail in any right undertaking, for in point of fact these unfailing ideas are his motive-power, his propelling force. The earthly life of our Master presents a wonderfully consistent illustration of this fact.
Christian Science reveals that nothing ever suffers excepting wrong thought, for matter cannot suffer, and divine Mind can neither suffer nor produce suffering in its reflection. To material sense, sorrow, sin, and sickness seem to be experienced in mortal thought; hence the remedy for all these phases of discord flows from the one source of harmony, the divine Mind, as manifested through those ideas which reveal God to man; thus, too, the grand and comforting promise given to us through the beloved disciple, namely, that God, recognized as imperishable Life, Love, and Truth, will "wipe away all tears" from human eyes, will clear the blurred vision so completely that "there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." To this beloved disciple, spiritual harmony and immortality had been revealed as the great reality of being, and in this light of reality the shadows of false belief had "passed away." It is indeed wonderful to consider how the divine ideas, emanating from God, led his thought to God; how, from the plane of a simple fisherman, he passed through discipleship, Christian ministry, exile, and martyrdom, up to the height of revelation, through which he finally gained the crowning joy of realization.
