In "Miscellaneous Writings" Mary Baker Eddy (p.264): "Unity is the essential nature of Christian Science. Its Principle is One, and to demonstrate the divine One, demands oneness of thought and action." It was Mrs. Eddy's "oneness of thought and action" which enabled her to interpret in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p.16) the Master's words in the Lord's Prayer, "Hallowed be Thy name," as "Adorable One."
Christian Science teaches that no one can believe in more than one God and demonstrate His wholeness, fullness, and infinitude. In Christian Science the one God is the perfect Ego, boundless, deathless, and eternal. This Ego-God is our Father-Mother, and the Ego-man, generic man, including all God's sons and daughters, has never lived apart from God in an existence of his own. He always has lived in perfect unity with the one God, one Mind, one Life, Truth, and Love. In this Ego-God and Ego-man we find the only I or Us.
In the kingdom of heaven all of God's spiritual ideas are forever individual, governed by the Father, and united in one brotherhood. But in human experience, because of the belief of minds many, there sometimes seem to be dissension and separation. Divine relationship, the only true relationship, has never been disrupted by the dream of human relationship, however sweet or bitter. In the kingdom of Love each one is wedded to his Maker and is in divine relationship to all of God's other children. The understanding of these truths heals the discords and the separations of mankind.
Into the consciousness of God's man, reflecting the divine nature, evil, envious, wicked thinking finds no entrance, no avenue through which to find expression; and error, confronted by the fact of man's purity, is stifled and falls into its nothingness. All men should have one motive, to love one another; one prayer, to glorify God; one praise, to exalt His name that the kingdom of heaven may be made manifest on earth. In reality, there is but one Mind to govern man, one Truth to guide him, one Love to protect him. In "Miscellaneous Writings" Mrs. Eddy tells us (p.135), "Our watchwords are Truth and Love; and if we abide in these, they will abound in us, and we shall be one in heart,—one in motive, purpose, pursuit."
The one perfect God knows no sin; therefore man, God's likeness, knows no sin. A knowledge of sin would destroy man's unity with God, separate his consciousness from God, and undermine his understanding of God. It is against man's unity with God that sin makes its wicked thrusts; but when one knows the utter powerlessness of sin, it cannot, even in belief, annul for him that divine union.
The Master understood man's unity with God to be an established fact, for after prophesying that his disciples would be scattered, and he would be left alone, he said (John 16:32), "And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me." At all times the Master identified himself with God and recognized God's great love for him. When praying to the Father he said (John 17:24), "Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world," and he asked the Father to glorify him "with the glory which I had with thee before the world was" (John 17:5).
It was the Master's understanding of man's unity with God that enabled him to do his mighty works. He could not have healed the sick if he had believed that fear and disease can separate man's consciousness from God; he could not have risen from the grave if he had not known that death has no power to separate man from everpresent Life. The Master's true selfhood could not have gone to the Father, in the ascension, if he had not known his preexistence as a spiritual idea and his inseparability from God.
When one's every desire for that which is not of God has been subdued, when one's every thought has been spiritualized through meekness, purity, and love, when one has atoned for every sin, however slight, his ego will go to the Father, and he will prove man's unity with God.
Christian Science teaches that there is but one Christ. Because Christ is the divine manifestation of the one infinite God, there can be but one Christ. One God and one Christ is the basis of Christian Science. Christ is Truth, the divine idea, the Holy Ghost, which redeems mortals from sin, heals them of sickness, and frees them from fear and from death.
It was the Christ which imparted to the prophets of old a sense so pure and holy that they were able to lift their thought above the belief that life is in matter and man is material to the realization that Life is Spirit and man is spiritual. This holy realization enabled them to demonstrate the power of Christ in spiritual healing and prove man's unity with Life and Love. Each one who really understands the Christ, the divine nature of God, will lift his thought above the belief that man is separated from God and demonstrate by healing sickness and sin the glorious fact that God is ever finding expression through man and man is always reflecting God.
To Timothy, Paul wrote (I Tim. 2:5), "There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." Mrs. Eddy teaches that none may unloose the sandals of the great Teacher of Christianity, who was its discoverer, founder, and demonstrator. (See The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p.338.) The Master had one holy purpose—to glorify God. He gave us one prayer—the Lord's Prayer—which acknowledges that the kingdom, the power, and the glory all belong to God. Because of his meekness and rejection of worldliness, popularity, and pride, the Master was vested in glory. He healed through God's Word and redeemed mortals from sin through the Christ; and he left his example for all mankind to follow.
There is but one Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy, who began her great lifework by sitting at the feet of Christ. It was Mrs. Eddy's insight into the Christ which enabled her to understand the Master's teaching and give its spiritual meaning to the world through Christian Science—the Comforter which was promised by the Master. This Science, or Christ's Christianity, reveals only one lawmaker, Principle, Mind. Christian Science reveals the oneness of Soul, sinless and pure; the oneness of Life, forever supreme; the oneness of Love, blessing all with its glory, and God's spiritual, perfect man as the only real man.
Christian Science is destined to bring unity to the whole world, for through its teaching all nations will know the one God, the one Christ. There will be but one faith, faith in Spirit alone; one baptism, that of Spirit, which will purify, Christianize, or spiritualize human consciousness. With one God and one Christ, one faith and one baptism, all men will be found "endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Eph. 4:3), and there will be one Shepherd and one fold.
