The student of Christian Science learns that dominion over the human sense of body, as progressively evidenced by Christ Jesus in his glorious career, culminating in the ascension, is not miraculous, nor is it confined to our great Master's experience alone, but it is the inalienable right of all men. This God-given dominion becomes the natural experience of each one in proportion to his understanding of what man divinely and scientifically is. On page 16 of "Miscellaneous Writings" Mary Baker Eddy writes, "The Principle of Christianity is infinite: it is indeed God; and this infinite Principle hath infinite claims on man, and these claims are divine, not human; and man's ability to meet them is from God; for, being His likeness and image, man must reflect the full dominion of Spirit—even its supremacy over sin, sickness, and death."
Throughout all mortal history the human mind, basing its deductions on the evidence of the five material senses, has concluded that what appears as an intelligent physical organism is real and true, and constitutes man. Accustomed to view existence from its own false standpoint, the human mind contends for its own limited and restricted concepts. Mortal mind conceives matter to be substance; consequently it believes that man, to be substantial, must be material. Christian Science, on the other hand, reasoning from the basis of the Scriptural declaration of the allness of God, Spirit, challenges material sense testimony, disposes of the superstitious belief in materiality, and reveals man as eternal, spiritual, and incorporeal.
The assumption that man consists of a material body inhabited by intelligence is without foundation in Truth. Acceptance of this belief limits a Christian Scientist's healing power. Our Leader writes in Science and Health (p. 75), "Had Jesus believed that Lazarus had lived or died in his body, the Master would have stood on the same plane of belief as those who buried the body, and he could not have resuscitated it." How important, then, to understand that the supremacy which the great Metaphysician maintained at all times and under all circumstances over the limiting beliefs of a human concept of existence was the outcome, not of any power peculiar to himself, but of his uninterrupted realization of divine sonship!
