ONE of the early lessons of Christian Science is that man exists at the standpoint of perfection, the exact image of God. The practice of this Science involves conscious identification of oneself with this perfection. Christian Science practice, then, does not start with a sick person; nor does it start out to do something to a person. "The starting-point of divine Science," writes Mary Baker Eddy in her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 275), "is that God, Spirit, is All-in-all, and that there is no other might nor Mind,—that God is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle."
Christian Science teaches that God and man are distinct in the Science of being, though they are forever one as cause and effect. Hence man's perfection is eternally established and maintained by God. Paul wrote (Acts 17:28), "In him we live, and move, and have our being." So in maintaining His own harmony, God coincidently maintains the harmony and well-being of His beloved son. This is not accomplished as two processes. It exists as one spiritual fact. Thus the student of Christian Science begins to reason from perfect God and perfect man as a present fact. Such a positive standpoint, with the dominion and freedom it includes, eliminates the problem as a basis for work or as an object to be watched in the work. The student joyfully identifies himself, not with a problem, but with the facts of being. He claims abundance and opportunity as his own. And he recognizes that beliefs about material inheritance, background, education, environment—whether they claim to be his in abundance or tragically lacking—can never change the spiritual facts of being into their apparent opposites, nor divorce him from the realization that these facts are forever included in his God-constituted and God-sustained selfhood. The facts of being remain untouched by the vagaries and distortions of the carnal mind. Hence in Christian Science the student does not start out to recapture his health or to regain his joy. Rather, he handles the error which says they can be lost.
To know that all is Mind, Love, is a most potent realization in the practice of Christian Science. With it comes the freeing awareness that there is no matter, no disease. The realization of perfect being now is the healing. There is no matter to change, to watch, to interest or to frighten us—no matter to hide God's presence or delay His power. All is Mind and its harmonious, spiritual expression.
Years ago Mrs. Eddy outstripped all the healing systems of her time by her remarkable discovery that there is no matter. Seventy-five years later the world acknowledges, in a limited and finite sort of way, the correctness of her discovery. Physicists and psychologists are saying that matter in its essence is mental. But psychological reasoning is never to be mistaken for Christianly scientific knowing. Psychological reasoning accepts mortal mind with its conditions of inferiority, envy, fear, as real. It announces that these are cause, and it makes its deductions from this basis. But can the Christian Scientist accept such a starting point? Can he tacitly go along with the current of educated human belief? He cannot. He understands that man has no private mind to be unruly or sick, for he accepts God as the one Mind, which is reflected by man. On the basis of the allness of this Mind, God, he sees the unreality of matter, and hence of disease.
In speaking of Jesus, Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health, p. 313), "He plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause." Sometimes one is willing to admit the unreality of disease, but not so willing to admit the unreality of its so-called cause. This places one in a contradictory position. The error which claims to be the cause of disease—the belief, the fear, the circumstance, the condition—is as figmentary and ephemeral as the disease itself. No aspect of error has reality. The cause aspect and the effect aspect are equally unreal. Christian Science calls boldly upon us to be done with negative delving into the unreal realm of matter, with negative lingerings over material evidences, names, symptoms, and to find the one spiritual cause, divine Mind.
God recognized and acknowledged as the true and only origin will bring to light whatever seems to be the latent fear—the stumbling block to healing—as well as the scientific fact which wipes it out. Spiritual knowing, or consciousness of the truth of being, brings into experience the calm and power of Love. Mind and its perfection become more and more evident. Isaiah records this deific command (Isa. 45:22): "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else."
The value of starting and staying at this altitude of thought was illustrated in the experience of a Christian Scientist who was confronted with a difficulty which frightened her. The first suggestions of error came to her as woeful questions: "Why has this happened to me? What have I done to deserve such a thing?" Before the error could multiply itself into resentment and self-pity, the Scientist vigorously declared that it was more important to understand that the error did not exist than it was to know why it seemed to exist. She declared that in God's sight there was no problem, and she worked from the standpoint of God's allness.
After some days there was improvement, but not complete release. Then she found herself rather frantically feeling that she must demonstrate more of God. However, she recognized such an attitude as personal and limited, for it brought with it fear, inadequacy, self-depreciation, and these she saw to be fraudulent. Earnestly she prayed to know herself at "the starting-point of divine Science," the point of recognizing God as the only Mind, the only might in the case. The sincerity of this desire unfolded into a realization something like this: "Demonstration belongs to God. My need is to realize that God demonstrates His own presence. There can be nothing wrong with His work." Peace and the certainty of present good came in the wake of this angel thought. The temptation to scrutinize or to rehearse the problem fell away. Its seemingly complicated details began to yield to the power of Mind, and at length the entire problem was solved.
Thus Science lifts thought into the realm of perfect being, where one sees man as the manifestation of God—fearless, unlimited, free. One sees that this state is not exterior to himself, is not dependent on person or place; that it is not outside his reach, an actuality which he hopes some day to appropriate. It is the status of his own true selfhood as the reflection of the all-inclusive Mind, which is God. He recognizes that man is not a spectator watching afar off the drama of good. Rather is he the expression of this infinite good. This recognition causes one to feel the freshness and assurance of divine Love, to experience the energy and power of divine Life, and to manifest the activity of divine Truth, forever undepleted and instant.
Thus in knowing the bounty and bliss of man's at-one-ment with Mind, in recognizing that man exists effortlessly and joyously at the standpoint of perfection, one exemplifies the truth of these words (Science and Health, p. 262): "Starting from a higher standpoint, one rises spontaneously, even as light emits light without effort."
