THERE is something about the words "new" and "renew" which awakens in the human heart a sense of hope, or expectation of happier, better things for mankind. We look forward to a new day or year, to new opportunities for service, or to a renewal of that already proved good. Politicians promise a new and improved order of things, and many times the electorate, hungering for betterment, for a government of justice and righteousness, hopefully gives them a vote of confidence. Truly does Pope say, "Hope springs eternal in the human breast;" and will not the very welkin soon be ringing with the expressed wish that friends and neighbors may have a happy New Year?
Now comes the Science of Christianity with a message of good for the human family which transcends mere hope and wishful thinking. It says to the sick, to the victims of sin, to those who seem to be tasting defeat and discouragement, There is newness of life for you; it is possible for you today to begin laying hold on this promise and demonstrating its truth.
Centuries ago the prophet Ezekiel called on the children of Israel to claim the newness and renewal of spiritual sense in these ringing words (Ezek. 18:31, 32): "Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye." What an invitation! The prophet did not merely express the hope that his hearers might taste newness of life; he bade them cast off their transgressions—the fears and limitations of ignorant material sense—and verily lay hold on a new, higher conception of being.
May not Ezekiel be likened to a schoolteacher who would say to his pupils: "Children, I do not have to wish you a happy experience with arithmetic. I bid you learn its rules, apply them, and thus you will have the joy and satisfaction of solving your problems." How the Christian Scientist longs to do more for his fellows than wish them a happy New Year! How genuine is his joy when he finds a heart receptive to Truth, to which he can pour forth the spiritual treasures of Science! How certain does he feel that a friend is happily and securely launched on the road to harmony when he has been introduced to "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," written by the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy! Someone once said, "I wish that I might conclude every new year's greeting with this statement: 'and, my friend, this textbook, Science and Health, will show you how to have a happy New Year.' "
Here may a word be addressed to those who have turned to Christian Science to gain some measure of newness of life and the healing of bodily ailments. In the fifth chapter of II Corinthians, the Apostle Paul makes several important statements about the material sense of body, statements which may well be pondered by every seeker after Truth. First he shows that the fleshly "tabernacle," or body, is not of God's building; in fact, he states that "whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord."
In Science and Health (pp. 216, 217) Mrs. Eddy elucidates this theme thus: "When you say, 'Man's body is material,' I say with Paul: Be 'willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.' Give up your material belief of mind in matter, and have but one Mind, even God; for this Mind forms its own likeness." This is in perfect consonance with Paul's continuing unfoldment as to the new man, or God's image, for he writes (II Cor. 5:16, 17): "Henceforth know we no man after the flesh. . . . Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
It is of prime importance that the student of Christian Science understand this vital Christian tenet. He must be willing to turn thought from the material concept of body and strive to realize that man's real identity is spiritually mental. For example, suppose you see in a friend an evidence of unselfed manhood or womanhood. Do you think of these Godlike qualities as having anything to do with his material body? Is not thought lifted away from corporeality? Are you not beholding the real, spiritual selfhood, that which embodies or expresses God, Love, Truth, and Life? The Christian Scientist, therefore, does not spend precious moments dwelling unduly upon the material sense of body. The more he can put it out of thought and keep it out, the greater peace and harmony he can know. Both with himself and with others he seeks for the real man in the realm of spiritual consciousness, and not in material sensation.
How futile, then, to turn to a material physician for a diagnosis and for an examination of the fleshly concept, or body, when one learns in Science that the material body is but the objectification of the human mind and is manifesting only what this mind believes and fears.
"If the body is diseased," writes Mrs. Eddy in Science and Health (p. 425), "this is but one of the beliefs of mortal mind. Mortal man will be less mortal, when he learns that matter never sustained existence and can never destroy God, who is man's Life." Then, a little farther along in this paragraph, our Leader makes one of the most important pronouncements in the textbook. We read: "Consciousness constructs a better body when faith in matter has been conquered. Correct material belief by spiritual understanding, and Spirit will form you anew. You will never fear again except to offend God, and you will never believe that heart or any portion of the body can destroy you."
Here we may see the happy fruitage of being absent from the material, sinful, sickly, and dying concept of body, and present with harmonious spiritual consciousness, wherein the real man is found— the real embodiment of good. Someone may ask, So the Christian Scientist would wipe out all thought of body? By no means. He is striving to give up a material, discordant, perishable sense of body and claim real, spiritual substance, that which reflects infinite Mind, Spirit, Love. The Scientist sees that this is what is meant by being in Christ, Truth, wherein old concepts and limitations pass away to make room for and reveal a "new creature."
As thought is turned from matter to Spirit, a better, more harmonious sense of body appears; but does this lessened sense of discord indicate that one now sees the real body, or spiritual embodiment? No; but one is seeing an improved concept, and he may rejoice that this is a step nearer the discernment of that body described as "the temple of God" (I Cor. 3:16).
In his great letter to the saints at Philippi, the apostle indicates again the joy of knowing no man after the flesh. He shows that those who are in Christ will find that the "vile body" known to material sense will "be fashioned like unto his glorious body" (Phil. 3:21). What a promise! What' a blessing to the whole human family bending under the burdens of a false sense of body! It is the privilege, nay the duty, of every follower of the Christ to know that man has, in truth, a glorious body; that the material concept which reports pain, discord, burdened weight, decrepitude, and all the unlovely etceteras of carnal belief, is a wicked, lawless, unreal burlesque of man's God endowed identity and individuality. What a recipe for happy new years! The spiritually illumined consciousness goes from glory unto glory!
