IN the statement, "The battle is the Lord's," David ascribed all power to God; he gave all the credit to God. We must learn to take our human footsteps as David did, in accordance with divine Mind, not so-called mortal mind. Our very first step is to decide this question: "Choose you this day whom ye will serve."
The individual who recognizes this fact—discerns it spiritually—realizes his God-given dominion, his power to prove God, good, as all. This God-given spiritual dominion over all the earth enabled Jesus to say, "I and my Father are one." His followers can reiterate this statement with understanding and power; and the "signs following" will be evil overcome and the fruits of Spirit made manifest in daily life. God's man knows his sonship with the Father.
Through our study and application of Christian Science we are finding perfect God revealed in the perfect man and the perfect universe. What we think about a material self is of the mist that arose from the earth; what we know about God and our real selves constitutes our power and authority. With this understanding our vision broadens, our mental horizon widens, until we embrace within our consciousness only that which reflects God.
God is Love. Man, God's reflection, is loving and lovable. How necessary, then, constantly to know the truth in Science, that man is the child of God! Spirit is the creator of man; therefore, man is spiritual: he is not material. Man is immortal now, not shall be. Man is now in the presence of God, infinite good. This presence is divinely active, supplying him continually with all he needs, for there can be no lack in divine Mind. Therefore, as Mind's reflection, there can be no lack in man's experience. All that the Father has is man's by reflection. We are conscious of this present abundance through right thinking. How beautiful, how simple, is this truth!
Let us analyze that which would deny the truth of spiritual being; see what it claims to be; handle it for what it is, a falsity, and so prove that we can no longer be mesmerized by the belief in two creations. In "Retrospection and Introspection" Mrs. Eddy has written (p. 67): "The sinner created neither himself nor sin, but sin created the sinner; that is, error made its man mortal, and this mortal was the image and likeness of evil, not of good. Therefore the lie was, and is, collective as well as individual. It was in no way contingent on Adam's thought, but supposititiously self-created. In the words of our Master, it, the 'devil' (alias evil), 'was a liar, and the father of it.' "
Fundamentally, sin is belief in evil —intelligent matter. A sinner is one who accepts this belief. Until we see this we are liable to accuse ourselves and everyone else of being a sinner, when the only sinner, as far as we are concerned, is our acceptance of the belief in sin, no matter where, or through what seeming channel, the belief claims to operate. It is our acceptance of the belief of sin which alone can make a so-called sinner seem real to us. We are called upon to prove that we live, move, and have our being in the divine Mind, which we call God, and to deny that there is any life or activity separate from God and His reflection, man. There is only one supposititious sinner, the acceptance of the belief in a life and mind apart from God.
"Forgive us our debts," we pray, "as we forgive our debtors." It is well to remember that we have a debt to the various concepts of animal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms, as well as to mankind; and our debt is to see the truth about everything. "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." We must learn to see everything as He made it, and see it as "very good." We do this, not by looking at the material object and thinking that we are going to make it better, or that it can influence us either for good or for evil, but by triumphantly knowing that where material sense would have us believe in animate matter with life and intelligence, there is, in reality, the one Mind, Spirit, ever expressing itself in order, beauty, grandeur. Thus we are enabled to cast aside a false material sense of responsibility, and joyously reflect God's dominion over all. What, then, becomes of evil? It fades into nothingness. So we displace the belief of malpractice with the truths of Christian Science, the ideas of universal Love. As our thought becomes spiritually pure, very naturally the sense of existence either in time, in space, or in a finite body will be destroyed, and we shall realize that the place upon which we stand is holy ground, since Life is continuous and man has always been in the bosom of the Father.
Unless the omnipresence of God is realized, a beautiful home, a lovely face, a happy gathering, all may attract thought to that great tyrant of human existence—personal sense. Our Leader says (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 310), "To impersonalize scientifically the material sense of existence—rather than cling to personality—is the lesson of to-day." As we learn to let our thought be the pure reflection or consciousness of God's presence, we shall manifest spiritual beauty because we know God's ideas to be beautiful; we shall be rich because we know God to be substance; we shall be good because we know God to be good. "Individual consciousness in man is inseparable from good" (Unity of Good, p. 21).
