"The glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams; wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby." In exquisite imagery Isaiah (33:21) thus typifies the bounty and freedom, the effortlessness, and the ever-present grace and loveliness of real being. What a contrast between the glorious spiritual sense of existence and the opposite view presented by the five material senses!
Physical sense, basing its conclusions on the false assumption that existence is either material or combined matter and Spirit, suggests that matter makes conditions for man and the universe. This false sense sees its own conceptions as material objects and regards the things and conditions it considers desirable either as being external to mortal selfhood or as having to be maintained by external means or conditions. To this sense it also appears possible for something to come between an individual and that which is rightly his; for instance, time, locality, nationality, education, and so on, claim sometimes to separate one from good; and the cost of much that is necessary and desirable can appear to stand between an individual and his perfect well-being.
Christian Science exposes the evidence of the material senses as both false and illusory. Starting from the Scriptural premise that God, Spirit, is infinite, the one perfect Mind, Life, Truth, and Love, it reveals man, the spiritual image or idea of this Mind, as likewise perfect and harmonious now and always. The elements and essentials of happiness are therefore spiritual and are never outside man, since they are forever within God, the only Mind or consciousness of man. Because it appears to material sense that harmonious material conditions are the cause of a sense of peace, security, freedom, happiness, health, and so on, mankind has sought spiritual blessings through material ways and means. But Jesus said (John 14:27): "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you." The Master knew that Mind is primary and that real consciousness embodies the divine sense of Life harmonious, wherein peace, health, happiness, and perfect satisfaction eternally abide, untouched by the fluctuations of an illusory mortal sense of existence.
