The history of the human race is a record of overcoming. Throughout long centuries, mankind has had to battle with all manner of difficulties; wrestle for its existence physically; struggle for its supremacy morally and spiritually. Bit by bit it has won the victory, and today it stands to a wonderful degree master of the so-called material forces of nature, exercising a large measure of control over itself morally, and possessed of an understanding of spiritual being marvelous indeed in its extent and accuracy.
No one can study human history seriously without concluding that a power unseen to material sense has been operating, as if behind the scenes. Matter has always appeared real to mortals; its so-called laws have seemed at times very powerful, even relentless to them. And the effect of belief in the reality of matter and material law has been to hold them down morally, and to prevent their development spiritually. The fact, therefore, that mankind has attained to the level it has of mastery over matter, and reached the moral and spiritual level which many have achieved, undoubtedly points to the continuous working of an agency whose nature is spiritual and good, an agency which men call the law of God.
Christian Science leaves the student in no doubt whatever upon this question. It teaches that God is good, eternally perfect Principle; that He is omnipotent and ever present, and that consequently His power for good is constantly operative everywhere. This means that men, with their false sense of matter as substance and their erroneous sense of evil as real, are separated only in belief from the governing divine Principle of the universe—God. Accordingly, what has happened is that through the understanding of spiritual law and obedience thereto, they have gradually come to dominate material beliefs, with corresponding moral and spiritual gain to themselves. To put it differently: since God, Spirit, is infinite, Spirit alone exists and manifests itself. Mortals, however, have believed otherwise, and have only gradually learned something of the truth of spiritual being. But as they have learned this truth and have made it their own by demonstrating it, they have proportionately lost their false beliefs and have attained to their present moral and spiritual status.
