"God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis. Mind manifests all that exists in the infinitude of Truth." These statements are from "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 258). Her works are replete with similar truths.
God's offspring or spiritual idea, man, possesses by reflection immeasurable capacity. Awareness of Mind as the only and continuous source of intelligence and good— an uninterrupted source from which stems an unending revelation of Truth—is gained through spiritual sense. "Spiritual sense," Mrs. Eddy says (ibid., p. 209), "is a conscious, constant capacity to understand God."
As a truer concept of God and man unfolds, human receptivity expands. Spiritual discernment and growth assuredly unite us with the infinite capacities of the one Mind. As the divine power is understood, we increasingly demonstrate the truths which Jesus so naturally apprehended; and as a result individual ability is improved. It is our privilege and duty as Christian Scientists to demonstrate spiritual capacity, which is in reality ours as ideas of God.
God cannot exist without His likeness or expression. Mind cannot be divided, restricted, or stayed. Mind is All-in-all, perfect, complete, ever operative, and the illumination of spiritual understanding enables us to demonstrate the capacity of Soul. Spiritual unfoldment is inexhaustible, ever active, unending. When one accepts this fact as true about his own being, limitations, inhibitions, and fears begin to dissipate. Hitherto undiscovered talents, aptitudes, and strength are discerned and developed as one realizes man's unity with his Father. God is forever the only intelligence. Man manifests divine intelligence, which cannot be depleted, interrupted, or destroyed.
In the ascent from the limited and mortal sense of being to the unlimited, free, and immortal, the human mind gains supremacy over false beliefs. Sensibility to good is quickened, and enlarged receptivity leads to demonstration.
The following experience shows how a young teacher was able to utilize the truth, when she was assigned to teach a group of children who were presumably almost hopeless mentally. At first she did not reject the sympathetic and joking remarks extended her by fellow teachers. And because mortal mind sees what it believes, before long these children appeared exactly as mortal mind pictured them. The teacher soon found herself a victim of her own wrong belief. Greatly disturbed and possessed by an overwhelming sense of discouragement and fatigue, she firmly took herself in hand. She saw that because falsehoods and evil suggestions had been given reality in her thinking, foundationless, false claims seemed to exist, which she must reverse, uproot, and destroy with Truth.
She began to do specific, daily, prayerful work and to correct her thought whenever the problem appeared. Children formerly seen as dullards, as disobedient, as possessing a limited capacity, were now accorded their true identity as the image and likeness of God. God was acknowledged as the only creator. As His representative, each of these children in reality possessed by reflection measureless capacity.
Right thinking about creation continued during weekly tests. Intelligence, honesty, efficiency, accuracy, comprehension, alertness, and courage were seen as God-bestowed qualities ever being manifested. Soon afterwards the principal of the school stated that this was the only group which had worked up to its fullest capacity. But the teacher knew there could be no "fullest capacity," since God is illimitable, infinite, and His ideas reflect infinity.
As proof that demonstration and fruition are one, during that year, individual children proved in a remarkable and satisfying degree that capacity is unlimited. Several entered a higher group. The teacher too was selected for teacher training in a nearby university.
Our Leader's writings show that as the human mind becomes imbued with spiritual understanding, an outward and upward expansion results. As intelligence becomes more flexible and gains a widening vision, comprehension and endurance are extended immeasurably. In the proportion that one knows his infinite capacity, as the reflection of that Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 2:5), latent aptitudes and faculties are demonstrated humanly. One thus discerns the truth of Paul's words (Rom. 8:16, 17), "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ."
The daily study of the Bible Lessons, outlined in the Christian Science Quarterly, quickens our receptivity and hastens our progress. Our revered Leader says in "No and Yes" (p. 21): "The Science that Jesus demonstrated, whose views of Truth Confucius and Plato but dimly discerned, Science and Health interprets. It was not a search after wisdom; it was wisdom, and it grasped in spiritual law the universe,— all time, space, immortality, thought, extension. This Science demonstrated the Principle of all phenomena, identity, individuality, law; and showed man as reflecting God and the divine capacity."
