Christian Science makes it very clear that God is All. Since He is All, He must be one and therefore individual. And since God is infinite, His individuality is infinitely manifested by man and the universe. Man has perpetual individuality, and his consciousness includes no evil, for it reflects Mind; and there is no evil in the unlimited Mind, God.
We read in Genesis (2:6), "There went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground." Christian Science uncovers the fallacy of the mist or mystification, showing that it is simply mortal belief. This mortal belief results in a so-called creation of matter, of minds many, of material personality, the exact opposite of the one true, spiritual creation as presented in the first chapter of Genesis. Christian Science shows that mortal belief has no real origin. Christ Jesus said of the devil, or false belief (John 8:44), "He is a liar, and the father of it." To accept the material sense of things as real is to be in bondage to all material so-called forces and laws.
Prior to the year 1875, in which the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," was given to the world by Mary Baker Eddy, the individual had no rule at his disposal to challenge the authority of the wholly mythical Adam creation. But Mrs. Eddy proved false the theological belief that this material creation, admittedly fragile and wholly temporal, was and is God constituted and God-blessed. Through spiritual healing, she fully proved that Christian Science reveals the spiritual laws of God's universe, the same laws utilized by Christ Jesus in his healing ministry.
This Science shows that the Christ, Truth, uplifts the human understanding, corrects mortal belief, and makes it possible for anyone to challenge the actuality of the material sense of creation. A willingness to give up mortal beliefs is requisite in order that the great facts of existence may unfold to thought. One then begins to understand that God's perfect man, revealed by the Christ, is ever present. Even a slight understanding of this truth lessens the self-inflicted bondage arising from the erroneous belief that man is material.
Some thirty years ago the writer left his home in a midwestern city in the United States to seek a position in the eastern section of the country. Prior to his departure a relative presented him with a copy of Science and Health and asked that he study it. He was obedient to this request and also attended Christian Science church services and many Christian Science lectures. He gradually learned how it is that a knowledge of the Christ, Truth, or the true facts of being, results in physical healing. His concept of the Christ had always been that of a man rejected by mankind and then crucified—Jesus put to death on the cross. He had had no concept of the Christ as the transcendent power of God to be individually expressed just as Christ Jesus so thoroughly and patiently expressed it. He had not had the slightest conception that the Christ revealed the individual's own real selfhood, the image and likeness of Spirit, and that the least understanding of this truth would bring harmony and even physical healing by displacing in a degree some phase of mortal belief.
Christ Jesus constantly repudiated the belief in material existence. He pointed the way to freedom by proving through spiritual healing that the Christ, the spiritual selfhood of man, is the only real selfhood and that an understanding of this fact frees one from the mortal belief in a selfhood other than the spiritual.
Although the Christian Scientist is aware in a measure of his true status as a child of God and knows that his real being is spiritual—conscious only of God, good— evil continues to urge its claim of mortality through material sense. The Scientist is aware too that in order to prevent mortal beliefs from controlling his experience, he must continue to purify human consciousness, for it is the human consciousness which holds these erroneous beliefs. On page 573 of Science and Health, speaking of St. John's vision of a new heaven and a new earth, Mrs. Eddy says: "This testimony of Holy Writ sustains the fact in Science, that the heavens and earth to one human consciousness, that consciousness which God bestows, are spiritual, while to another, the unillumined human mind, the vision is material. This shows unmistakably that what the human mind terms matter and spirit indicates states and stages of consciousness."
The elimination of all belief in a selfhood apart from God is required of each human being, either here or hereafter. If this attainment is difficult, the reason is that the denial of a material selfhood seems to threaten one's very existence. This seeming threat then hinders one's willingness to begin to exchange mortal beliefs for a spiritual understanding of man's present and perfect existence in God. Yet one's spiritual selfhood can never be reached except as the false material self is overcome.
That the attainment of spiritual selfhood brings complete physical healing and freedom from limitation is no secret to the Christian Scientist. He knows that in the degree that anyone is willing to empty his thought of the material and temporal—of self, in all its utter falsity—he is successful in experiencing healing for himself and in bringing healing to others as well.
Since, as Christian Science teaches, the material sense of things—the material creation—is a product of mortal consciousness, the denial of this fictional creation is necessarily self-denial. The mortal consciousness, then, must deny itself, its own illusory nature, its own suppositional claim to reality in order to yield to the divine consciousness, which is just at hand and which perceives the spiritual universe, including spiritual man, as the creation of Spirit, God.
In the proportion that one yields lovingly to God's purpose he will find his freedom from sin, sickness, and death. Then the human "consciousness which God bestows," that consciousness which has yielded up belief in matter, cleansed of all self, will appear. Christian Scientists are grateful to be actively engaged in gaining the spiritual understanding which is leading them to express the infinite nature of God.
