"The robes of Spirit are 'white and glistering,' like the raiment of Christ. Even in this world, therefore, 'let thy garments be always white.'" This rousing admonition by Mary Baker Eddy on page 267 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" is a demand for purity, purity of mind, here and now. One of the illumining statements regarding Christ which we find in the same textbook reads (p. 332): "The Christ is incorporeal, spiritual,—yea, the divine image and likeness, dispelling the illusions of the senses; the Way, the Truth, and the Life, healing the sick and casting out evils, destroying sin, disease, and death." Is it not by dispelling the illusions of the material senses, then, that our thought is purified and that we put on the mighty and glorious Christly raiment?
Can this purity of mind be realized in this world? It may be reassuring for us to consider here the fact that the Bible and Science and Health make it quite clear that it is possible for us to fulfill every spiritual demand made upon us. The above-quoted request is a call to awaken to true consciousness, to a spiritual awareness of divine reality. A consecrated and progressive human effort to gain the understanding of God as All-in-all and a sincere striving to submit one's own thinking and acting to the control and government of Spirit are the first and indispensable steps in the right direction. This human effort to know and obey God is blessed of our Father-Mother.
A great purification of human thought will evidence itself when we begin to see that man was never born into matter. By acknowledging that God is man's Life, the foundation for purity has been established in understanding. Personal sense, a belief of existence apart from God, with all its self-exaltation and selfishness, will be found nonexistent. We need to remain true to the spiritual vision and cultivate that purity of heart which accepts as real only spiritual thoughts of everybody and everything. Purity and spirituality are synonymous. Looking to God as our source of being, we begin to rejoice in the ever-growing knowledge that man as God's idea is spiritual, immutably whole, changelessly perfect, harmoniously active, completely satisfied, fully joyous, and spontaneously loving.
