ON page 488 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy writes: "Mind alone possesses all faculties, perception, and comprehension. Therefore mental endowments are not at the mercy of organization and decomposition,—otherwise the very worms could unfashion man. If it were possible for the real senses of man to be injured, Soul could reproduce them in all their perfection; but they cannot be disturbed nor destroyed, since they exist in immortal Mind, not in matter."
Spiritual man, created by God in His own image and likeness, reflects the sight and other faculties of all-seeing creative Mind. Man's senses, inherent in Mind, are eternal; they therefore cannot be lost or deteriorate. Their immortality and perpetuity are evidenced through spiritual understanding. In the light of omnipotent Truth and Love, immortal man is identified as the perfect idea of divine Principle, the one infinite Life, God. Reflecting the divine energies of Life, individual man is intact. He is held securely in the all-encompassing embrace of infinite Love and cannot be identified with anything unlike his creator. The all-intelligent Mind has bestowed upon him, through reflection, God's munificent nature.
All that spiritual man has, derives from Mind. Nothing outside of Spirit can influence him, for he has no organic or material composition. Comprised of the elements of Spirit and maintained by divine Love, he is impervious to the false beliefs of variable and dimming sight entertained in the thought of mortals. Spiritual man and his creator are not cognizant of matter, which is but the subjective state of mortal mind. Nor can this so-called mind cognize Spirit and its manifestations. Spirit and matter are opposites: one is real, the other is unreal; consequently they cannot commingle.
Human beings believe that sight originates in and dwells in matter, and that matter and mind coexist. They depend upon material eyes for sight, the condition of those eyes determining the quality and quantity of vision. They sometimes believe that much usage causes blurring sight and eyestrain, and that increasing years result in organic impairment or lack of sight. These and other destructive beliefs are illusions, to be denied and reversed by Truth.
Faulty vision is a belief frequently appearing in human thought. Human beings who listen to the subtle and suggestive lies of mortal mind without refuting and reversing them unwittingly accept the jurisdiction of spurious optical laws and often find themselves in bondage to two pieces of glass. Ground glass has no intelligence or power of itself to enhance or deplete perception. Its seeming power accords with mortal mind's belief about it. But the material mind is an unintelligent and godless counterfeit, claiming entity but utterly lacking reality because it lacks intelligence, the essential quality of Truth, God.
Real sight is wholly spiritual, independent of material organism. It functions harmoniously because it originates in and is maintained by the one all-seeing Mind. God's man does not need glasses to enable him to see more clearly. His sight is independent of matter. It is a perfect and imperishable expression of Mind. Usage does not strain or exhaust it, for man is the continuous expression of the ever-active, all-seeing Mind.
Man, the idea of God, abides in light and Love, and is never deficient or lacking in anything good; nor can he lose anything that the great and only cause, God, has bestowed upon him. He is not affected by the false claims of age or deterioration. He neither stands still nor retrogrades, but unfolds obediently in response to the mandate of infinite Mind. Never fluctuating between Spirit and matter, Life and death, he abides at the point of perfection and cannot deviate therefrom.
If it appears the lesser of two evils for a Christian Scientist to use glasses, that does not mean that they have to be accepted as a permanent necessity. The sooner the claim is handled and persistently refuted, the more quickly will it be met. Procrastination and vacillation are errors that must be uncovered, unmasked, and destroyed. Mrs. Eddy writes (Science and Health, p. 167): "It is not wise to take a halting and half-way position or to expect to work equally with Spirit and matter, Truth and error. There is but one way—namely, God and His idea—which leads to spiritual being. The scientific government of the body must be attained through the divine Mind." And she adds, "Only through radical reliance on Truth can scientific healing power be realized."
A Christian Scientist who for close work had been dependent upon glasses for many years, was healed when she took a radical stand for Truth. Over a long period of time she yearned for the spiritual understanding of true sight that would enable her to dispense with glasses. She endeavored to clarify her thought, to express more gratitude and compassion, and to be less critical. At every opportunity she tried to be alert to erroneous suggestions and to reverse their seeming presence with firm declarations of Truth.
At first the condition did not improve, but rather seemed to be aggravated. She felt that this reaction was the resistance of error to Truth. It came to her quite clearly that she must rely wholly upon Spirit if she wished to be healed, and not "expect to work equally with Spirit and matter." Knowing from past experiences that the wings of scientific healing are clipped by reliance upon matter, even in the slightest degree, she dispensed with her glasses and leaned upon the infinite, all-seeing Mind to guide and sustain her. Improvement resulted immediately after a radical stand was taken. For a while the Lesson-Sermon from the Christian Science Quarterly was read with difficulty, but she accomplished it daily. There were times when she was tempted to release her hold on Truth and return to the old crutch, but she did not yield. She knew that every declaration of Truth, understandingly affirmed, was a deathblow to error.
The Biblical account of Jacob's wrestling with error came often to her thought as she struggled to hold on to the spiritual enlightenment already obtained. Jacob did not let go of the angel until he was blessed by him. She too would hold fast, enlarge her understanding, and grow in grace "until the breaking of the day." The verses from Isaiah (60:1, 19), "Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. . . . The Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory," were a great encouragement to her.
A few weeks after she had discarded the glasses, she was asked to substitute for the First Reader at the Sunday service in her branch church. At that time the healing was not complete. Fear presented itself in the guise of good, suggesting that it would be wise to resort to the glasses just for this occasion to prevent error from creeping into the service. She knew that she was being tempted to believe that error was a preventive against error. Would she choose Spirit or matter? She prayed for guidance and followed the light as she saw it. She threw all her weight in the scale of Spirit. She knew that her only responsibility was to obediently claim the God-given ability to see which inheres in man's oneness with God. Thus she got the human sense of self out of the way and reflected Truth so clearly that the Word of God was unobstructedly declared.
As she read the service joyously and without difficulty, a sense of calm and spiritual illumination came to her. She knew that she was healed. This coincidence of the healing Christ in human consciousness proved to her conclusively that divine Truth and Love are the only power on earth as in heaven. The healing has been permanent.
Spiritual healing invariably follows regeneration. The unreality and impotence of matter are demonstrated as we turn from it and steadfastly gaze toward Spirit, thus depending upon God alone for support and guidance. The alchemy of infinite Love in human consciousness arouses it from the Adam-dream of mind in matter to the grand reality that Mind, God, is All, and that the only real man, individual and spiritual, is whole and complete in God's all inclusiveness. He joyously expresses the unlimited nature and perfect faculties of his all-seeing and all-knowing creative Mind.
