Christ Jesus stated a great fact when he replied to the young man who called him, "Good Master," "Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God." From a human standpoint, Jesus surely had a right to be called good. But he knew too well the subtlety of error, and saw through the claim that any phase of personality is good. He did not identify himself as a good mortal, but as the Son of God, the spiritual manifestation of good. He knew God as Spirit, Mind, and so the Son of God, or Christ, was to him the direct and full expression of Spirit, Mind, and not a human personality through which good was strained.
Christian Scientists should be wise and alert, as was Jesus, in identifying themselves with spiritual reality, and in not thinking of themselves merely as persons trying to express good. The false belief called a good human person, thinking from the standpoint of human goodness, at the same time admits the claim of human evil, and therefore is used in some measure by error. On the other hand, the real man, constituted of spiritual ideas operating only in the divine Mind, God, the one infinite good, is never in the suppositional area of mortal suggestion, and is consequently untouched by any so-called erroneous mental influence.
The only Mind capable of thinking or knowing true, spiritual ideas is divine Mind, Truth itself. It is obvious that mortal belief or mortal mind, so called, cannot know or express Truth. The only true or real thinking or consciousness there can be is Truth knowing what is true about itself. Christian Science teaches that God is Mind, and His man, or manifestation, is necessarily His idea and not mortal personality. The understanding of this fact enables one to prove his divine individuality by the quality of his thinking. One is identified as the idea of God, or spiritual man, when his thinking expresses the nature of universal good, impartial Love, pure Mind. The statements of Truth, unfolding as consciousness, are actually that perfect Mind's own self-expression, and, of course, cannot possibly be affected by any phase of mental manipulation, propaganda, or suggestion. It would be no more possible for Principle's ideas to be influenced or affected by mortal suggestions than it would be to change the multiplication table by mental manipulation. It is in this realization and right identification of oneself with the spiritual idea of divine Principle that perfect freedom of thought and harmony of being can be demonstrated.
