THE only past we can, in reality, own is our preexistence as the children of God. That which claims to tell us we do not know man's primal, primeval spiritual state is the mist of supposition, the cloud of material ignorance, which has nothing to do with man, who is the expression of the divine knowing, even as Christian Science reveals. That Jesus insisted on his preexistence as the Son of God is brought out in many gospel passages, particularly where he says, "Glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." Jesus, having been born of Mary's spiritual perception, was enabled to show the way out of the false belief in a material existence, to lead to the understanding of man's true selfhood in God, divine Mind.
Sometimes error would mesmerize us into dwelling on our past personal human experiences to such an extent that thought and energy, which should be directed to active spiritual living in the present, are largely wasted in fruitless regret. And only as we substitute the truth of man's spiritual estate for the mortal record, can we free ourselves from such unprogressive thinking.
The first stirring from the dream of existence as material probably comes to us as we read the living, glowing words of Truth in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. What was our first impression of that wondrous revelation? If any one will ask himself the question, on looking back at his first glimpse of the Christ, Truth, will not the answer be that he suddenly came upon something he had all the years yearned to be assured of, and had, perhaps, agonized for "with groanings which cannot be uttered"? Was it not like a coming home, a returning to that place in the inmost sanctuary of our true existence, where there are no problems, no voids, no dissatisfactions? We had not, after all, to wait for some distant, unknown sphere, wherein to find divine reality; we came upon the kingdom within, which had been there all the time.
