That ringing declaration by Paul that "we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ," states a demonstrable fact. When making this emphatic affirmation, Paul must have realized that it was then, and always would be, capable of proof. The full significance of this stirring assertion can be grasped only as the individual, illumined by spiritual understanding, makes a clear distinction between the human Jesus and Christ, the divine idea. Spiritual ideas are capable of proof only as they are clearly distinguished from false beliefs and appearances. Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 535:) "A belief in other gods, other creators, and other creations must go down before Christian Science. It unveils the results of sin as shown in sickness and death. When will man pass through the open gate of Christian Science into the heaven of Soul, into the heritage of the first born among men? Truth is indeed 'the way.'"
These words of our Leader's leave us in no doubt as to what must be expelled before we can establish our rights as joint heirs. Christian Science, revealing the allness of Mind and idea, shows that reality is harmonious, and that in this divinely harmonious consciousness there is no avenue or agency through which evil can operate. We are heirs to this truth, therefore, as we expel all those occupants of our thought which testify to the presence and power of evil. Material sense, which testifies to life, substance, and intelligence as something apart from God, must be replaced by spiritual sense. Here it is well to remember that we embrace in our thought not only our bodies, but everything of which we are aware; consequently, we are harmonious in the degree that we accept as real God's perfect creation and deny the false material testimony concerning it.
From the foregoing statements we are led to the inevitable conclusion that we see ourselves as joint heirs with Christ only as we reject false material concepts and claim man's unity with God—oneness with divine, harmonious consciousness. As sons of God, as expressions of the infinite intelligence, we can know no incompetence, inadequacy, incompleteness, insufficiency, or insecurity, for we reflect the health, strength, and completeness of Mind. Knowing our rightful heirdom to the affluence of Spirit, we deny defeatism and discouragement and realize the presence and power of God alone.
