CHRISTIAN SCIENCE brings to the world the message that genius is spiritually natural. A dictionary tells us that genius is "extraordinary mental superiority; highly unusual power of invention; origination of any kind." A general belief about genius is that it is original creative power; that it is a personal endowment and cannot be acquired. It is only through understanding that God, Spirit, Life, alone creates, and that man reflects the central light of being, possessing by reflection all of the divine qualities of the Father-Mother God, that we are able to grasp a little of what actually belongs to us as the children of God, who bestows His good gifts on all impartially. Everything God made is good and perfect, like its creator; the lie, error, is not the originator of anything real. Hence, if in his work one would reflect God, one must live and labor in the consciousness of divine Love's ever-presence, equipped with realization of divine Mind's marvelous power.
Jesus taught that the real man is governed by God's law, the law of Soul. With sincerity, purity, obedience, the earnest student of Christian Science may surpass his ordinary capacity, breathe man's native air of spiritual freedom, and develop his gifts so that they unfold in beauty and power. There can be no great achievement without spiritual activity, mental growth, obedience to the law of God, Life, Truth, and Love. Our Way-shower has given us the keynote of success in these words: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise." Christ Jesus claimed no intelligence, activity, ability, or selfhood apart from God.
The belief in an entity separated from God, of a so-called mortal man living and moving in an orbit all his own, is responsible for humanity's many failures and lack of power. The divine will is bliss and fruition for all; but in order to receive the divine messages imparted by the Father to His immortal children, we must learn how to be obedient to God's will. The healing of ambition, pride, selfishness, false desires; respite from the bondage of vaunted temperament; freedom from heavy burdens and care, are the unfailing reward of Christian Science rightly applied. Our Leader, herself so free from self-interest, so consecrated in her desire to understand the divine Principle of healing, writes in "Unity of Good" (p. 9): "The talent and genius of the centuries have wrongly reckoned. They have not based upon revelation their arguments and conclusions as to the source and resources of being, —its combinations, phenomena, and outcome,—but have built instead upon the sand of human reason."
