One day while laboring with a sense of fatigue and pain which seemed to begin quite suddenly, I opened the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, to page 502. I was very much awakened and aroused when I read the following spiritually enlightening sentences: "The infinite has no beginning. This word beginning is employed to signify the only,— that is, the eternal verity and unity of God and man, including the universe."
I could see immediately that the only beginning there ever was or could be is the unity of the true man with his Father-Mother God. This unity is something that has always existed and can never end. As I pondered the passage, I could see very clearly that error was only a dream and really never had a beginning. It was unfolded to me that the true man cannot possibly experience anything that does not originate in God. Nothing can ever separate God from His idea, man. The peace and harmony of the man of God's creating can never be interrupted or touched by error of any kind.
As I reasoned in this manner, the pain and weariness disappeared, and I was free. These errors never were true because they never were a part of the beginning, nor were they included in the perfect unity of God and man. They were unknown to God and to my true selfhood and therefore were never real.
Mrs. Eddy's words quoted above interpret the great truth regarding creation as recorded in (Science and Health, p. 311): "What we term mortal mind or carnal mind, dependent on matter for manifestation, is not Mind. God is Mind: all that Mind, God, is, or hath made, is good, and He made all. Hence evil is not made and is not real."
Because of its ignorance of the truth of being, mortal mind deceives itself by experiencing its own phenomena; for whatever this mentality sees, feels, or hears is a kaleidoscopic impression or delusion and not something outside itself. When mankind awakens from the dream of life in matter through an understanding of divine reality, the belief of a material selfhood disappears before the actuality of true being.
Jesus' rebuke of wickedness and of the ignorance of God, expressed by the unillumined human mind, was vigorous and forceful. He said to his opponents (John 8:44): "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it." This statement shows that evil is its own enemy and destroys itself because it is not of God and is therefore a powerless lie.
In the short space of three years, which comprised the earthly mission of Christ Jesus, this great Metaphysician overthrew and rendered null and void many of the time-honored customs and educated beliefs that mankind had accepted. Matter and error were proved to be unreal when he walked on the water, fed the multitude, healed the sick, and raised the dead to life. His discernment of the might and majesty of eternal Truth overcame the myth which had, during the ages, asserted the reality of evil and matter.
Peter and John on one occasion realized that the erroneous picture of deformity was no part of the spiritual man, although personal sense testified that an individual lame from his birth lay before them at the temple gate. They glimpsed God's perfect child.
Although the lame man had never walked before, the demonstration of truth was so complete that at once he used his legs and ankles, which for so long were believed to be useless. We read (Acts 3:8), "And he leaping up stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God." He did not have to learn to walk.
This proof of God's power to heal shows that spiritual faculties are never impaired or lost and that they are never dependent upon matter, nor are they in the physical body. The lame man healed by Peter and John had really never lost his God-given strength, agility, and perfection. The realization of this great fact by these spiritually minded men healed what mortal mind believed that it saw, and the man began at once to engage in normal activities. The evidence called an imperfect body, appearing to mortal mind, was only an objective state of material sense, showing that matter is only manifest mortal mind, possessing neither substance, selfhood, nor reality.
Our Leader states the truth of being, which uncovers the deception and delusion of sense testimony called the mortal mind and body. We read (Science and Health, p. 84), "To understand that Mind is infinite, not bounded by corporeality, not dependent upon the ear and eye for sound or sight nor upon muscles and bones for locomotion, is a step towards the Mind-science by which we discern man's nature and existence."
Mrs. Eddy's great discovery is rousing the thinking of mankind to the realization that all is Mind and its perfect manifestation and that matter is wholly unreal and nonexistent. Spiritual enlightenment reveals that Truth or good knows no time or beginning and therefore can have no end and that man, God's true witness, enjoys eternal peace as the evidence of God's glory.
