When Christ Jesus taught his followers the parable of the tares and the wheat, he was showing mankind how to reap a harvest of spiritual good. He was explaining the duality of the so-called human mind, wherein good and evil seem to exist side by side, and expounding the Science of salvation, which demonstrates the nothingness of mortality and the immortal nature of good.
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 72), "Mortal belief (the material sense of life) and immortal Truth (the spiritual sense) are the tares and the wheat, which are not united by progress, but separated."
Christian Science reveals God, Spirit, as All, the source and substance of all spiritual consciousness. It demonstrates good as one Mind, never divided into many minds but including within the vastness of its infinite comprehension every manifestation of good. Existing eternally in one universal unity, or wholeness, good never wanders from the control of the one intelligence, God. The fact that God is the only Mind bases the great harvest of spiritual healing with which Christian Science is blessing mankind.
The newcomer to Christian Science may be astonished to learn that the five material senses which seem to be part of his consciousness are not the creation of God, but false mortal beliefs—the tares of the Master's parable; that they are the originators of matter, sin, disease, and death, and that they have no real existence. But when he perceives the fruitage of spiritual healing which follows the understanding of their falsity, he hastens to follow the Master's instructions and destroy his belief in their existence by realizing their unreal nature and the allness and reality of Truth. He knows there can be no harvest of spiritual salvation until this separation is made.
Although Mrs. Eddy reveals divine Mind as the only Mind, she does not ignore other claims to consciousness which she designates as human mind and mortal mind. She teaches mankind how to destroy what appears to be mortal consciousness through a deep comprehension of divine Mind's allness.
"Divine" means pertaining to or proceeding from Deity, and divine Mind is the consciousness which is absolute good—Spirit and its immortal reflection.
"Mortal" means subject to death, or causing death. As it is defined in the Glossary of Science and Health (p. 591), mortal mind refers to God's opposite, hence to evil, destined to be wholly eradicated by Christian Science, which uncovers its worthless, spurious nature.
In Science and Health the terms "mortal" and "human" are often used with synonymous meaning, but primarily, human is defined as pertaining to humanity, or mankind, and an understanding of this fact often provides a clear comprehension of our Leader's meaning. The translation of Enoch, Elijah, and possibly Moses proves that human beings are not necessarily subject to death. In so-called human consciousness, where the spiritual sense of life and the corporeal senses seem to dwell in one individual—though never touching—the struggle for salvation from mortality takes place and the victory of good over evil is won.
It is the presence and activity of spiritual sense in human consciousness that relate it to God. It is this divinely derived element that has access to spiritual resources, for it is to spiritual sense that Christ comes. Mrs. Eddy says in "Unity of Good" (p. 60): "Christ cannot come to mortal and material sense, which sees not God. This false sense of substance must yield to His eternal presence, and so dissolve." Humanity is related to divinity in the degree it is spiritually awake and reflecting the divinely derived forces of understanding, intelligence, goodness, holiness, and power.
The mortal, or material, element in human consciousness can never be saved. Christian Science forces it to acknowledge its own nothingness and disappear. Our objective in a demonstration of Christian Science is to overcome the material sense of existence—not to gain better tares; it is to rouse humanity to recognize God's allness and man's spiritual, eternal perfection as His idea, thus to put off mortality and reveal immortal reality.
Under the marginal heading "Mortal mind's disappearance" in Science and Health, our Leader mentions the necessity of our learning how mankind govern the body and explains the spiritual method, which leads to complete salvation. Here she says (p. 251): "We should learn whether they govern the body through a belief in the necessity of sickness and death, sin and pardon, or govern it from the higher understanding that the divine Mind makes perfect, acts upon the so-called human mind through truth, leads the human mind to relinquish all error, to find the divine Mind to be the only Mind, and the healer of sin, disease, death. This process of higher spiritual understanding improves mankind until error disappears, and nothing is left which deserves to perish or to be punished."
Christian Science has brought to fulfillment the prophetic parable of the tares and the wheat. Spiritual understanding is separating the real from the unreal and garnering the bounty of truth. The Master's words have new meaning (John 4:35, 36): "Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal."
