"THERE is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death" (Rom. 8:1,2). In spite of this rousing proclamation written centuries ago by Paul, the so-called law of sin and death continues to defraud mortals. Why? Because mortal thinking, captivated by false material sense, is ignorant of God's government, wherein man, forever free from the bondage of materiality, expresses health and harmony in accord with His spiritual law.
True law is the revealed will of God. Jesus' earthly ministry was a continuous demonstration of God's will. Because his pure spiritual sense understood man's inseparable relationship to the Father, even in his darkest hour in the garden of Gethsemane the shadow of death could not dim the fervency of his lifelong prayer that God's will transcend his own. Completely silencing human will, he was lifted above the tomb of finite sense to spiritual resurrection.
The faithful mediator at all times applied Spirit's law of harmony, which annuls the false law of sin, disease, and death. His healing statements were simple reiterations of the basic spiritual facts of creation. He so clearly understood that man is Godlike that under God's authority he successfully commanded the blind to see, the lame to walk, the deaf to hear, the sinner to be cleansed, and the dead to arise. His constant understanding of the complete and eternal perfection of man as God's reflection enabled him instantly to destroy the lying testimony of the material senses. He proved conclusively the falsity of the material law of incurable disease when he healed the leper. Likewise, by healing instantaneously he proved groundless the supposition that Christian healing requires either process or convalescence.
When the lawyer asked Jesus which was "the great commandment in the law," he answered (Matt. 22:37-40): "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." In these few words the greatest exponent of divine law the world has ever known concisely summed up true law. How its profound simplicity must have confounded the lawyer used to dealing in the ambiguities of human law! The great Way-shower knew that unless one loves God and man with all his heart, all his soul, all his mind, he cannot grasp the magnitude of the revealed will of God.
If our health, happiness, or supply seems incomplete, the need is not to make matter better or to make it more comfortable, as the deceitful senses would delude us into believing, but to become so spiritually-minded that the false sense of incompleteness vanishes before the realization of man's perfection and his inseparable sonship with God. Through the transparency of spiritual sense God reveals His perfect will on earth as it is in heaven. "Spiritual sense," Mary Baker Eddy explains in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 209), "is a conscious, constant capacity to understand God." In other words, it is found through twenty-four hour daily consecration of thought to obedience to the First Commandment (Ex. 20:3), "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." When God's will is consciously and constantly given precedence in our every thought and deed, the aggressive suggestions of evil never find mental or physical expression.
The explanation for chaos in human experience is chaotic thinking. Since God, divine Mind, is incapable of producing inharmony, discord must result from the delusion of a mind apart from God, the All-in-all. Spurious material laws which would claim to put man's free life in limbo and doom eternal Life to decay are but misconceptions of material thought. They have no power except what the believer, mortal mind, gives them. The belief of life and intelligence in matter, of a selfhood apart from God, is ignorance of God's irrevocable law.
Spiritually enlightened thought cannot be hoaxed into accepting lawless beliefs, for it knows fable from fact, mortal illusions from divine ideas. It is impossible for material laws to make an invalid of the real man, who is governed by God's eternally valid, everywhere operative laws of health, wholeness, and harmony. God's blessing of spiritually enlightened thought, which knows only Life, Truth, and Love, annihilates the godless laws of sin, disease, and death.
Since God, as the Bible tells us, is "of purer eyes than to behold evil," man, His expression, can neither behold nor experience evil. Consistent spiritual knowing is the most valuable insurance we can have. It pays large dividends in security, protection, and peace of mind. The writer has practically proved the protection of divine law.
Before starting on a motor trip some time ago, she was impelled to reverse the aggressive mental suggestion of accident. She worked conscientiously as she had been taught in Christian Science until fear was dispelled and there came the peace of answered prayer. She then started on the trip with joyous anticipation.
Two hours distant from her destination, it was necessary to stop at a garage for a minor repair. Because it was winter, the large garage door was closed, but a small, heavy swinging door permitted entrance through it. The base of the garage door formed a stumbling block about a foot high. She pulled the door open, but not realizing that the door did not open to the ground, she tripped across the obstruction and fell onto the cement floor, the heavy door slamming shut on her legs. For an instant she thought she would lose consciousness, but having formed the habit of refuting evil as an impostor she found herself declaring, "I am not in it." The pain was intense. However, that instant, positive declaration enabled her to hold to the spiritual facts of being. "If my real selfhood is not in this experience, physical laws cannot touch me or condemn me," she reasoned. Freeing her feet from the door, she arose and walked despite the argument of physical injury.
Returning to the car, she continued driving as though nothing had occurred. She clung to the truth of God's infallible law of protection. Suddenly a sense of joy flooded her consciousness as she saw that this was a challenge to prove that God's likeness cannot experience anything which God does not know. Spiritually uplifted, she rejoiced in the new glimpse of God's nearness. At that moment the pain ceased abruptly. When she reached her destination not the slightest trace of the accident remained. The swelling and bruises had absolutely disappeared for lack of a believer.
The same divine law which brought protection to Daniel in the lions' den, to the three Hebrew men in the fiery furnace, and to the Israelites at the Red Sea is just as available to humanity today as it was then in overcoming the false laws of animality, controlling the elements, and commanding so-called material forces. In "No and Yes" by Mrs. Eddy we read (p. 30), "God's law is in three words, 'I am All;' and this perfect law is ever present to rebuke any claim of another law."
