Christian Science alone interprets God aright to mankind and reveals the basis of thought and action whereby men are equipped to have dominion over all of the limitations and obstructions of evil and materiality.
When the disciples of Jesus brought to him an epileptic child and asked why they could not heal him, the Master said that it was because of their unbelief. And then he gave them the remedy and healed the sick child. He said that this discord could only be healed by prayer and fasting—by the turning away from material testimony and looking to God, Spirit, for the solution. And he said (Matt. 17:20), "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you." Here is the answer to the stone wall of materialism and to all the closed doors and other obstacles which trouble mankind today.
Faith based on the true understanding of God and man will accomplish what great scientific discoveries and achievements of the ages have failed to do. In demonstration of this fact, Jesus instantly quieted the tempest, walked on the waves, fed multitudes, overcame death. And he appeared to his disciples while they were assembled behind closed doors. Today Christian Science is showing mankind how to do the works which he did and is pointing the way of security and salvation from all of earth's discords and obstructions.
Christian Science shows us the true basis of faith and spiritual understanding whereby we may demonstrate the dominion with which God has endowed all of His ideas. This Science reveals God to be Spirit and Spirit to be the only true and enduring substance. It teaches that all creation is constituted of spiritual substance.
God is pure Mind, and His creation consists wholly of pure spiritual ideas existing eternally in this Mind or divine consciousness. There are no limitations, no obstructions in Mind, no stone walls or closed doors. All good is available to each idea, from the least to the greatest.
God's creation is governed by the unerring laws of Truth, Life, and Love. Therefore all of God's ideas dwell together in perfect, harmonious, indestructible right relationships. In this realm of Spirit there are no accidents, no problems, no failures, no discords. Movement in the realm of Spirit is mental, governed by the one perfect Mind of all.
It was faith in and the understanding of these truths of spiritual creation that constituted the substance of Jesus' demonstrations. It was faith and understanding which furnished him with the actual evidence of things unseen to the material senses. Mary Baker Eddy tells us (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 101): "The scientific sense of being which establishes harmony, enters into no compromise with finiteness and feebleness. It undermines the foundations of mortality, of physical law, breaks their chains, and sets the captive free, opening the doors for them that are bound."
Evil, acting through the persecutors of Jesus, attempted every step of the way to put a stone wall in his path of progress. It nailed his body to the cross and used every means available to assure itself that he was dead. But the Way-shower's faith, supported by spiritual understanding, raised his body in proof of the fact that man is spiritual and deathless. Jesus was not a mesmerist or a hypnotist. Neither was he a magician. He performed his mighty works through the acknowledgment and utilization of the laws of Spirit, which annul every false claim of material sense.
A stone wall or a closed door—a physical or mental obstruction in the form of an incurable disease, a depraved appetite, or an enslaving suggestion of lack or delay— is never a reality. It is not substantial because it is based on sand, on a false concept of creation. Any material obstacle is therefore not a reality but an unreality, not a material creation but a false belief, a nonentity. A material object can never interfere with man's movements and progress. That which is required to prove the unreality of matter is faith in and understanding of the spiritual nature of God, man, and the universe.
Jesus fed the multitudes not by first acknowledging and then overcoming an actual obstruction of limitation or lack. He prayed and fasted; he turned away from material evidence to the recognition of the actual fact that all good is spiritual and is immediately available to all of God's ideas. His confidence in this truth resulted in the wiping out of the false evidence of lack and in the recognition of ever-present spiritual abundance. Then the supply was at hand to be enjoyed.
Our work in the face of any seeming material or mental obstruction is to turn thought away from the stone walls and closed doors of mortal belief. We should stop making a reality of error, idly examining it, and trying to work out some means of surmounting it. In the degree we do this, we make an obstacle of it. Our work is to declare the nothingness of error, to turn away from the false evidence and fix our gaze on the scientific fact of the allness and perfection of Spirit and its spiritual creation. As thought yields to the actual truth of being, the evidence of the stone wall and the closed door fades out, and we see and experience the blessings of the green pastures and bright skies of the realm of Spirit always at hand.
In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 264): "Mortals must look beyond fading, finite forms, if they would gain the true sense of things. Where shall the gaze rest but in the unsearchable realm of Mind? We must look where we would walk, and we must act as possessing all power from Him in whom we have our being." If we follow these instructions, we shall not stop when we come to a stone wall—to any material obstacle. We shall not bemoan our fate and thus dwell in the misery of mortality. We shall not try to surmount it or beat it down.
But we shall go straight on in spiritual scientific thought and demonstration and find that there is actually no such wall to hinder or obstruct our progress Spiritward.
