How joyously a child awakes in the morning to the prospects of a day to be spent with those it loves. How much more joyously may we all awaken spiritually to find all good here and now in God's eternal day—the beauty of holiness, the perfection of man's real self hood, health, true and enduring happiness, timeless being. If mortal existence were real and God-ordained, there would be no necessity to awaken out of it, in fact no possibility of doing so. There would have arisen no prophets of God, no Messiah with a ringing message to mankind, and no such stirring counsel as Paul gave to the Corinthians (I Cor.15:34), "Awake to righteousness, and sin not."
The Scriptures, in the light of Christian Science, show that the supreme objective of mankind must be to awaken from the sense dream to spiritual understanding, the kingdom of God. Jesus' whole ministry was devoted to awakening mortals to the reality of spiritual existence. He began his three-year public service "preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel" (Mark 1:14, 15). The questions then arise: "What needs to be awakened? Is man asleep, and does he dream of life and sensation in matter or physical sense?" No. Man in the likeness of God is His perfect spiritual reflection. Mary Baker Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 249): "You say, 'I dreamed last night.' What a mistake is that! The I is Spirit. God never slumbers, and His likeness never dreams. Mortals are the Adam dreamers." It is human consciousness which needs awaking from the false belief of life in matter.
To understand clearly that mortal existence is a dream, even as the dream we have in sleep, is essential to progress in Christian Science. The night dream seems very real while we are dreaming. The people we meet, the streets we walk, the houses we inhabit, the diseases, the sins, and the sorrows we experience, seem convincingly real. However, the moment we awake we realize that these things never actually existed. Nevertheless, on awakening, mortals repeat the mistake they made while sleeping. They accept the daydream of sense existence with all its discords as real, substantial, and enduring.
