Intelligence governs the universe and man. Christian Scientists and many who are not yet Scientists will agree with this statement. This intelligence is God, the supreme wisdom, power, and presence, the universal Mind. The material senses assume total ignorance of this Mind, hence the need to cultivate spiritual sense with which to discern or understand God and His spiritual creation.
In the practice of Christian Science the evidence of the material senses must be continually denied and discredited. The truth regarding any situation is discerned only through the denial of material sense and the exercise of spiritual sense.
Mary Baker Eddy writes in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 298), "Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, involves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, reality." From this statement by our inspired Leader it is clear that spiritual sense appears as an orderly unfoldment. For instance, intuition is the power of knowing, innate or instinctive knowledge, rather than knowledge obtained through human or material reasoning. One has heard it said, "I instinctively feel that Christian Science is the truth, although I have not studied the subject deeply." This intuitive sense of the truth is a departure from material sense, which accepts as real what it sees, hears, feels, or believes.
Sense evidence must be superseded by Soul evidence before reality can appear. And Soul evidence is the view of man and the universe as created by Mind, the supreme and universal intelligence.
Intuition awakens one from the deep sleep of the Adam-dream which is associated with a material sense of life. This awakening in Christian Science is the dawn of reason and revelation, leading to the true concept of man and the universe. At the first awakening, the spiritual idea of man may seem vague and dimly defined, but the star of hope, the expectancy of good, has risen on the horizon, and through the Christ a way of escape from the evidence of the material senses—sin, sickness, and death—is discerned.
At this point faith comes into action. Instead of believing everything which we seem to experience through the material senses, faith in a spiritual and harmonious creation begins to take form in thought. One then comes to have less faith in the material and greater trust in the spiritual. Thus instead of reliance on material methods of healing, one seeks to solve his problems by means of the spiritual enlightenment of God and man found in the Bible and in the Christian Science textbook.
Faith enables us to trust in the Christ, Truth, when material sense testimony threatens. Much that is helpful and remedial comes through faith, but faith is not the goal. Christian Science is not a faith cure. We cannot afford to halt in the shelter of faith, but must press on in our effort to gain the safety of spiritual understanding.
To understand is to know without a fraction of doubt, without a shadow of turning. It may be this state of consciousness to which Jesus referred when he said (John 8:32), "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Spiritual understanding brings freedom from the erroneous testimony of the senses. When the truth concerning God and man is understood and applied, the problem disappears and there is immediate demonstration. Spiritual understanding, which brings fruition, is a step beyond faith in the way leading upward to reality. Christ Jesus said (Matt. 7:20), "By their fruits ye shall know them." According to the degree of our spiritual understanding we are able to dissolve the discords of material sense and to demonstrate the harmonies of Spirit.
This gracious and precious gift of spiritual understanding is acquired by watchfulness and prayer, by the denial of the pleasures and pains of sense, and by the recognition, acceptance, and utilization of the attributes of Spirit. Spiritual understanding enables the earnest seeker for Truth to become a successful practitioner of Christian Science. Preparation for the public practice of Christian Science should be looked upon as a sacred calling. The practitioner should be prepared in season and out of season to go wherever the Christ calls him. This sacred calling gives the student of Christian Science ample opportunity to exercise and increase his understanding. Thus his own progress is linked with the work he does for others, and in the words of Isaiah (62: 11), "His reward is with him, and his work before him."
Understanding brings to light reality, which is the realization that all exists in God, Spirit, and manifests His love. Reality has no problems to resolve. We all can rise to this realization, for are we not the sons and daughters of God, created in His image and likeness and given dominion over all the earth?
The simple yet profound sentence from page 298 of Science and Health quoted earlier in this editorial reveals the footsteps mortals must take from the darkness of materialism into the freedom of Mind, Spirit. When we ponder the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, let us realize what a wealth of knowledge awaits our acceptance as we press on with greater zeal to explore the vast fields of spiritual experience awaiting us. It is indeed inspiring to realize our opportunities for spiritual progress in Christian Science. Our beloved Leader has made every provision for such advance: she has instructed us in the way of life, given us an infallible guide through her writings, established a church organization, and provided for safeguards in the Manual of The Mother Church so that her followers may take the steps from sense to salvation and safely progress from intuition to reality.
