Christian Science, through Mary Baker Eddy, its Discoverer and Founder, is teaching the world that God, and God alone, God as infinite Mind, as divine Life, Truth, Love, governs and sustains all His creation. The revelation of Christian Science comes to a race of men educated to believe that evil is real and powerful and that materiality largely governs their life experience.
This belief is entirely refuted by Christian Science, which uncovers the untruth of materiality in all its ways and declares that God is not its author. God creates only that which is like Himself, spiritual, pure, and perfect; and He has no competitor, no opposer. Christian Science reveals prayer as the means by which the thrusts of evil and the disappointments of a material sense of existence can be nullified and overcome. Since this Christian warfare calls for continuing spiritual understanding and increasing spiritual activity, the Christian Scientist learns to turn constantly for renewed strength to the infinite source of all good, God Himself.
What are the basic facts of Truth by which one can be revived and refreshed daily? That God is truly All-in-all, the only power, presence, and true existence; that there is but one true creation, the spiritual man and universe; and that any supposed opposite of this divine fact is, because of the allness of God, an illusion, a mental mirage, without any element of enduring existence.
The work of the Christian Scientist is to prove, as he progresses on his human journey, the allness of divine good, the nothingness of whatever would oppose this good. By little or by much, according to his honesty and fidelity, the student of Christian Science is telling upon the boast of evil through his reflection of and obedience to divine Mind. As one stands for and trusts the power of the spiritual idea, God's creation, he proves that the falsity of evil really never accomplishes anything but its own eventual disappearance.
Suppositional evil is working to the end of its own destruction. Its own activity constantly weakens it. It has no element of self-preservation. It spends itself by its own efforts. This because it has no true foundation on which to stand, no animating Principle by which to endure.
When one can regard evil as evanescent and passing in its loudest moments; when one can realize it is only wasting itself with every effort it makes to persist, its claims to presence and power are being undermined. To be sure, evil belief seems to go on so long as it is believed by mankind, but the individual protest against its claims to power helps to annul it, individually and collectively. Daily the Christian Scientist is witnessing in his own experience what happens to a lie or to a mistake when Truth confronts it.
In her article "To the Christian World" in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 103), "Because Science is unimpeachable, it summons the severest conflicts of the ages and waits on God." So the Christian Scientist is ready for the conflict. He knows that waiting on God is nothing passive. It is the active reflection and use of Truth in Christian Science treatment, or prayer, through which Truth is constantly telling upon the negation evil, throughout the world.
The followers of Christian Science have the means by which the claims of evil can be weakened and nullified. They know that understanding, living, and directly relying upon the all-presence and all-power of God as divine Mind in every situation withdraws mental support from the myriad beliefs in evil as power. Without mental support, evil must fall. Without human belief to sustain it, evil has no claim.
To displace erroneous beliefs with the activity of spiritual understanding requires constant attention, multiplying renewals of inspiration, a continuing state of spiritual revival. It is possible that a jaded sense or a weary season may try to call itself one's thinking, that a dulled outlook may attempt to settle into thought. One may find himself for various reasons or for no evident reason unillumined, unenthusiastic. The Christian Scientist should be freshly enthusiastic about God and Truth and spiritual healing at all times. If he is not, his need is for revival, resuscitation, a renewal of conviction and devotion to the service of God. The disciples had it at Pentecost. Christian Scientists, as disciples, can have it today.
In the Scriptures is found the prayer of Ezra declaring (9:8), "And now for a little space grace hath been shewed ... that our God may lighten our eyes, and give us a little reviving in our bondage." We find the Psalmist rejoicing (Ps. 138:7), "Though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me," and pleading (85:6), "Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee?"
A religious revival needs an evangelist. What can be the evangelist for Christian Scientists but the Word of God in the Scriptures and in the writings of the Founder of the Christian Science movement? Our Leader asserts in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 251), "Sin, sickness, and disease flee before the evangel of Truth as the mountain mists before the sun." And in the textbook of Christian Science, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," she writes (p. 559): "Mortals, obey the heavenly evangel. Take divine Science. Read this book from beginning to end. Study it, ponder it."
If human lethargy neglects the evangel, if thought gets too preoccupied or too indifferent to seek the inspired Word in daily consecration, enthusiasm can be lost. Neglecting study breeds more neglect. The less one reads, the less one may want to read. But the more one reads, the more he wants to read. Reading whets the appetite for reading, stimulates deeper desire for it. And why? As one reads, mortal mind retires. As it retires, it leaves a place for the evangel—human consciousness emptied of falsity, eager for Truth. The healing which results from consecrated study attests the reviving power of the Word. He who keeps the books of Truth closely by his side, holding thought open to their healing pages, is daily revived, resuscitated, renewed, regenerated.
If one is really obliterating his belief in evil as reality, he has invulnerable defenses in his own thought, and his revival in Truth and Love can never be interfered with. Understanding poised in God frees itself for advancement, for revival, for higher experience. One who knows himself held in perfection by Principle does not blame circumstances, situations, other people. He works for himself, never against himself, for others and never against them, by continuing renewal in the things of the Spirit. He holds to the resuscitating power of Spirit and goes forward.
The Christian Science movement is going forward. One cannot attend an Annual Meeting of The Mother Church, know of the enthusiasm, happy support, and spiritual impetus which flood in upon the Church from all over the world at that season, without realizing that Christian Science is founded upon the Rock, Christ, is reaching around the world, and can never be shaken from its divine foundations. But the demonstration of Christian Science must of course continually wax stronger if the world is to be won for Christ.
With true revival come the humility and courage to cast off worldliness individually, to lift the Christian Science movement as a whole that it may undo the higher attenuations and more subtle modes of evil that would prevent Christ's reign in the earth. As a world movement and individually, daily revival, renewal of consecration, will increase the power and scope of Christian Science healing and so quicken the heart of humanity.
Revival in Truth! Every treatment is a revival. Every prayer is resuscitation. Every study hour is revival, the evangel itself pouring love and strength and courage through every statement of Truth. Every overcoming of self is revival. Every service to another is revival. Every church service, every lecture, every association meeting, every issue of the Christian Science periodicals—these spiritual impulsions are all revivals. They are heaven–sent revivals to one's courage, hope, faith, love, and enthusiasm!
With spiritual revival always at hand to inspire, the student of Christian Science should constantly find himself having a firmer grasp on reality, a stronger hold upon the ceaseless substance of Soul, an increased abiding in the understanding of heaven itself. With the Psalmist he can know God's mercies to be new every morning and can prove the resurrecting power of Truth each hour of every day.
