The transforming power of Christian Science is best apparent in lives which have come to express happiness and health through its ministrations. The inevitable laws of God, of the one Mind, which is Love, are ever present and immutably good. Christian Science awakens humanity to the understanding that the healing of mankind's condition and circumstances is within the orbit of these always beneficent laws. Physical healing is one of humanity's great needs. Often such healing comes instantly, but sometimes by gradual steps. But come it must, sooner or later, for Truth is irresistible, establishing that only which is real and right and dissolving forever that which is unlike its own perfect and lovely nature.
The transforming power of Truth is described by Mary Baker Eddy as "the alchemy of Spirit." In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" she writes (p. 422): "As when an acid and alkali meet and bring out a third quality, so mental and moral chemistry changes the material base of thought, giving more spirituality to consciousness and causing it to depend less on material evidence. These changes which go on in mortal mind serve to reconstruct the body. Thus Christian Science, by the alchemy of Spirit, destroys sin and death."
Alchemy was the forerunner of our modern chemistry, and among the many activities of the early alchemists was the endeavor to transmute the base metals into gold. In human affairs, however, "the alchemy of Spirit" is taking place in quite a different way, and the transmuting agent is the Christ, which reveals the true idea of God and man, and in its eternal tenderness and joy exchanges mortal ways for the pure gold of man's likeness to God. This divine process is aptly defined in this familiar Bible passage (I John 3:2, 3): "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure."
This purifying process is indeed "the alchemy of Spirit." When the Christ, the true sense of being, appears, leaving no room for aught unlike God, good, one will find that his true self is pure, spiritual, immortal, and forever lovely.
Christian Science changes the material base of thought so that the grossness of mortality is dissolved, and the true sense of being reconstructs the body and destroys sin and death. This is Christian Science healing. The old fears and superstitions, the false theories and laws, which constitute the bondage of a mortal, are neutralized by the Christ, and one is enabled to rise in the conscious understanding of his glorious likeness to the divine.
Our Leader says (Science and Health, p. 162): "Christian Science brings to the body the sunlight of Truth, which invigorates and purifies. Christian Science acts as an alterative, neutralizing error with Truth." She continues farther on, "The effect of this Science is to stir the human mind to a change of base, on which it may yield to the harmony of the divine Mind."
As sunlight spontaneously dissipates mist and darkness and discloses the fair morning landscape, penetrating everywhere with its effulgence, so Christian Science permeates the entire consciousness. It is the divine alterative that cannot be hindered or obstructed; it demonstrates ever-present Love, which fills the universe and has in actual fact no opposite within its immortal realm.
This is the understanding which Christian Science imparts: that God is infinite Love; that man is God's own likeness governed only by beneficent laws; that the kingdom of heaven is not a material place, but the realm of the pure consciousness of spiritual truths and so is at hand. The recognition of these glorious truths brings healing and happiness to humanity. This recognition discloses that the evils which are so greatly feared are not hostile entities but illusions, which appear to exist because of mankind's ignorance of the allness of good. These evils disappear through "the alchemy of Spirit."
The investigations and activities of the ancient alchemists are interesting to the student of chemistry and metallurgy. How different and infinitely more precious, however, is the divine alchemy. It is ever bringing about happier and better conditions through the destruction of that which is unlike God and is revealing the pure gold of man's character as the son of God. Since the discovery of Christian Science in 1866 a new sense of life has permeated the world and has brought an amazing awakening to the infinite possibilities that attend a higher understanding of God as divine Principle.
In ways too numerous to mention, this revelation has come to mankind with definite and practical results. Students of Christian Science are entrusted with the immense and splendid task of demonstrating the truths of our Leader's revelation until the time described by Habakkuk (2:14) when "the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."
This work can only be accomplished divinely and scientifically, in the manner indicated by Mrs. Eddy, whose admonitory words are more pressing now than ever before (Science and Health, p. 324): "Be watchful, sober, and vigilant. The way is straight and narrow, which leads to the understanding that God is the only Life. It is a warfare with the flesh, in which we must conquer sin, sickness, and death, either here or hereafter,—certainly before we can reach the goal of Spirit, or life in God."
