Everyone desires a healthy body, and many individuals have found that to consider their bodies as servants rather than as masters is to take an important step in having less difficulty with them. In a very real sense, man is the conscious embodiment of Spirit's ideas and of those faculties, capacities, and qualities which characterize him as the spiritual reflection of God.
From the human point of view, however, we seem to have material bodies, which are ours to utilize. They identify us with our environment, and they change as our thought changes. They will disappear when we become fully aware of our spiritual identity, or real body. In the meantime, an understanding of the Science which relates man to divine Mind makes one progressively superior to the human sense of body. It makes available an increasing sense of dominion over a material sense of being.
As thought becomes spiritualized, we entertain a spiritual rather than a material sense of body. With the clarity of spiritual discernment, we see that there can be but one true concept of body, the spiritual concept. Furthermore, we see that whatever appears to be wrong with our physical body is wrong only with our false sense of body. Consequently, when the false sense is corrected, the body is healed. This is achieved as we exchange a material sense for the spiritual sense of body.
On pages 217 and 218 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" are to be found statements by Mary Baker Eddy on the proper attitude of a Christian Scientist toward the human body. Her remarks correct an answer to a question which appeared in the Christian Science Sentinel and give evidence of her spiritual wisdom. The question was, "If all matter is unreal, why do we deny the existence of disease in the material body and not the body itself?"
Among many interesting points brought out in Mrs. Eddy's remarks is this one (p. 218): "Neither the Old nor the New Testament furnishes reasons or examples for the destruction of the human body, but for its restoration to life and health as the scientific proof of 'God with us.' The power and prerogative of Truth are to destroy all disease and to raise the dead—even the selfsame Lazarus. The spiritual body, the incorporeal idea, came with the ascension."
While on a long journey, I suffered for several days with an infected finger. The discomfort seemed at its peak on a rather tedious train ride of many hours' duration. I worked and worked prayerfully, applying every truth I knew, but the pain continued with no diminution. Finally, I turned my thought to God and asked, "What shall I do now?"
The thought came, "Well, you can read Science and Health." So I began reading complete chapters of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy, but not consecutively. It was not long before I realized that I had been reading many important statements having to do with body and the control which divine Mind exercises over it.
Of course, I had read these statements before, but now they seemed clearer. It came to me that perhaps I had been ignoring body more than I realized. Two statements stood out, both having to do with something that needed to be acknowledged. One was contained in this sentence (p. 427): "Immortal Mind, governing all, must be acknowledged as supreme in the physical realm, so-called, as well as in the spiritual." The other was even more specific (pp. 384, 385): "Sickness, sin, and death must at length quail before the divine rights of intelligence, and then the power of Mind over the entire functions and organs of the human system will be acknowledged."
These two statements brought to my thought more clearly than ever before that unless we consciously place our human bodies under the jurisdiction of immortal Mind and keep them there, we unconsciously permit them to be under the jurisdiction of mortal mind with its numerous oppressive beliefs. The acknowledgment of immortal Mind's supremacy in the physical realm, so called, brought welcome relief, and soon the finger was normal.
Paul wrote to the Romans (12:1, 2): "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."
What is implied in this statement encourages us to place the present sense of ourselves on the altar of divine Science, not as a dead, but as a living sacrifice. In so doing, we give proof of our recognition that God is able to care for all the conditions essential to a harmonious state of being.
In the correction mentioned above Mrs. Eddy goes on to state (Miscellany, p. 218), "Jesus demonstrated the divine Principle of Christian Science when he presented his material body absolved from death and the grave." Today, as always, the truth concerning body sets free our human sense of body by bringing it under the beneficent jurisdiction of divine Mind. We need to correlate this sentence of our Master's in the Lord's Prayer (Matt. 6: 10), "Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven," with the teaching of Christian Science: the real jurisdiction of the world is to be found in God, divine Mind.
The jurisdiction of a court of law includes the district or area over which its authority extends. The area of divine authority includes infinity, even what is temporarily referred to as the physical realm.
The purpose of the inspired Word of the Bible is to bring to humanity a full and complete salvation from mortality, from sin, disease, and death. The manner in which this is brought about is clearly elucidated in the writings of Mrs. Eddy.
Through the healing ministry of Christian Science, divine qualities and ideas are brought to bear upon the needs of mankind, and the ministry includes prevention as well as cure of sin and disease. This Science rests upon the fact that Soul is ever and always able to supply whatever is needed for a strong, healthy, free, and useful body. Maintaining this fact in consciousness, human thought turns to Soul, and anxiety for body is disposed of. A healthy body is a human system in which functions and organs are under the control of divine Mind.
