The man whom God knows and cherishes has a glorious history. This history, however, is spiritual, not material. It is unsullied by sinful sense, base thoughts, unmanly deeds, or selfish motives. In it there are no sickly, sordid, or fearful memories. It contains no record of lack, limitation, lost opportunity, injustice, war, accident, or suffering. It includes nothing that can leave a scar. This being so, any belief to the contrary, any experience or combination of experiences etched on mortal consciousness and labeled a regrettable or discordant past, can be utterly wiped out as we learn the truth of man's glorious history and daily put this knowledge into practice.
Does someone who clings to the ills and regrets of a so-called past question this statement? A thorough and honest investigation of the teachings of Christian Science will dispel his doubts. According to this Science, all mortal experience, the only place where the beliefs of sin and suffering can ever be found, is a false sense of man's origin and history, and this false sense disappears when the truth regarding man is understood.
In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, pages 501 to 521, is a scientific explanation of the spiritual record of creation as set forth in the book of Genesis. This explanation concludes: "All that is made is the work of God, and all is good. We leave this brief, glorious history of spiritual creation (as stated in the first chapter of Genesis) in the hands of God, not of man, in the keeping of Spirit, not matter,—joyfully acknowledging now and forever God's supremacy, omnipotence, and omnipresence." Spiritual creation, God's unfoldment of His own perfection, power, glory, omnipresence, and sinless beauty and goodness in man, is true history.
Mrs. Eddy, in showing mankind how to bring the glorious facts of being to bear on human thought and thus destroy its ills and limitations, adds (ibid., p. 521): "We should look away from the opposite supposition that man is created materially, and turn our gaze to the spiritual record of creation, to that which should be engraved on the understanding and heart 'with the point of a diamond' and the pen of an angel."
This unfolding eternally going on does not involve passing time, for time is no part of the eternity in which man lives. The now of unfolding facts does not join an endless cavalcade of yesterdays. Each unfolding fact in human consciousness, like a ray of light, brings with it the power of elimination to all that is unlike itself; thus, with its appearing, some element of mortal history, some picture of sin, disease, or death is wiped out.
Suffering and other mortal experiences Christian Science classifies as unreal. In order to understand this, one must first comprehend the clear distinction which Science makes between the real man made in God's image and likeness and the untrue image, the Adam-dream, which appears as a supposition that there is a creator besides God, Spirit. This untrue image of man as mortal the Apostle Paul admonishes us to put off, and Christian Science shows us plainly how to do it.
Mortal history is simply a record of what appears to take place in this Adam-dream, which claims life and intelligence to be in matter. While in actual being nothing ever takes place except God's glorious unfoldment of Himself, there appears in the dream experience to be the opposite of God-ordained history going on. In human experience each happening is etched on individual thought. To the unenlightened thought deep etchings of sin, sorrow, and other terrifying beliefs may remain in memory over long periods of time to torment. This is the penalty, self-imposed, for believing in the reality of that which is material and temporal, thus unreal; and such belief is synonymous with having other gods, which, the Bible tells us, brings penalty. Even when these images are lost to conscious thought, they may remain as unconscious figments of belief and continue their depredations on health and harmony.
Of this false history, Mrs. Eddy has this to say (ibid., p. 530): "The history of error is a dream-narrative. The dream has no reality, no intelligence, no mind; therefore the dreamer and dream are one, for neither is true nor real." The false mental pictures comprising the history of so-called mortal man have no power in themselves to do anything. But belief in the reality of what they record, backed up by general mortal thought, wrongly called law, gives them their seeming power. Thus when through the teachings and practice of Christian Science this kaleidoscope of beliefs is replaced by facts, one's life takes on a new and healthy aspect, and the penalties imposed by a false sense of life are destroyed.
When the writer was a child, a sense of lack was manifested in the family over a long period of time, due to the breadwinner's frequent inability to work because of serious lung trouble. According to a legend of family history, he had inherited a frail constitution, including weak lungs, and was not able to withstand the rigors of winter. His father had passed on from the same trouble. These, and other pictures of a mortal past, were apparently deeply engraved on his thought, producing fear.
During a period of confinement to the house, an acquaintance of the family offered to give him Christian Science treatment. This offer was gratefully accepted. As a consequence, in a very short while the breadwinner was back at his work, quite well. Incidentally, the problem of supply was solved too. The Christian Science treatment, reiterating the true record of man's origin and history, had destroyed the fears associated with a false sense of existence. Following this, the father lived an extended, useful life, which reached nearly to his ninetieth birthday.
The enlightenment and healing which Christian Science is bringing to the world will continue until all that is called matter or mortality is eliminated. Then the prophecy of Habakkuk will be realized (2: 14): "The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." Also, Jesus' command (Matt. 5:48), "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect," will be recognized as presenting perfection as the true history of man, now and always.
