THE Christian world acknowledges that Christ Jesus, the Way-shower, exercised a purely spiritual dominion over all the phases of evil which he encountered in the course of his ministry. His vision of God, good, and of man in God's likeness, was so clear and constant that he never yielded to fear; nor was he ever deceived by the evidence of the five physical senses. Through spiritual understanding he destroyed the false mortal beliefs embodied as blindness or deafness, insanity or disease; and to sorrowing parents he restored their loved ones who, to all appearance, had died. Furthermore, the Way-shower taught unlettered men, simple fishermen and others, to exercise this same spiritual dominion; for after three years' discipleship they too healed the sick and raised the dead. What was the source of this invisible and wonderfully practical healing power? It was God, divine Love, to whom Christ Jesus, the faithful witness, pledged himself in constant, unfailing allegiance.
Christian Science teaches that since God is changeless Principle, infinite Life, Truth, and Love, this spiritual dominion is available to-day; that it has not been lost. Owing to its ignorance of God, and of man in His likeness, mankind has seemed to be engulfed in a morass of materialism, from which it has vainly attempted to extricate itself by material means such as diet, climate, medicine, surgery, hygiene, or else by the exercise of human intellect, self-will, hypnotism, psychoanalysis, or other mortal agency—has sought to escape by the selfsame ladder which lowered it into the abyss of materialism.
How, then, is spiritual dominion to be restored to mankind? By a return to that spiritual concept of God and man, that illumined singleness of vision, which enabled John to write, "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." In other words, the vision must be gained that in God, who is Spirit, there is no matter, no sickness, no sin; that in Life there is no death, and in Love there is no hate or fear; that in infinite good, evil has no place, that it is but an ignorant, mortal illusion which seems to hold temporal sway in the thoughts of mortals. From these illusions mankind can assuredly be released through a demonstrable, scientific understanding of God and His image, spiritual man. Just as darkness has no starting point, and is banished by solar light, so the belief in evil has no cause or creator, and retreats before the spiritual understanding of Truth, Life, and Love.
