CHRISTIAN SCIENCE is teaching human beings that their struggles are not with persons, conditions, or events, but with suppositional material sense. It is also revealing that through spiritual sense is discerned the relationship between God and man, which is eternal and indestructible. It is the divine element through which Truth reaches and redeems human nature. Through it is attained the consciousness which was never born and will never die, and in which is unfolded infinite reality, in accordance with the divine law of progress. Spiritual sense cognizes only good, and through it is gained dominion over the seeming consciousness of evil. Our Leader has stated this fact with characteristic clarity in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 288): "The suppositional warfare between truth and error is only the mental conflict between the evidence of the spiritual senses and the testimony of the material senses, and this warfare between the Spirit and flesh will settle all questions through faith in and the understanding of divine Love."
Perhaps no incident in the Old Testament is more helpful to the student of Christian metaphysics than the story of Jacob's struggle at Peniel. Here it is evident that Jacob's victory was the result of his effort to spiritualize his own thought; to rouse himself, by means of prayer, to perceive the truth through his God-given spiritual sense. His objective was evidently one of self-healing through the power of Spirit, as he indicated to Esau at their harmonious meeting in the words, "For therefore I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God."
When the Christian Scientist learns that the solution of his problem depends upon the sense which he himself entertains of it, the whole matter of dominion is greatly simplified. The situation in which humanity finds itself may be likened to that of an individual living in a room which has two windows. Both look out upon the same garden, which is filled with lovely flowers. The glass in one window is discolored and flawed, giving a distorted appearance to the garden. The other is clear and clean, revealing the flowers in their natural beauty. Through which mental window do we look upon existence? Through the deceiving window of material sense or through the clear truthfulness of spiritual sense?
