FREEDOM, complete freedom, is man's precious heritage as the son of God, not only freedom from evil, but freedom to be the perfect man whom God makes in His likeness. Man's spiritual perfection includes freedom from mental and bodily suffering as surely as from social and civil bondage.
The whole human family seeks respite from suffering. No one wants it, but everyone at some time, in some measure, is faced with it. Suffering sense asks: "What is suffering? Whence comes it? Why must I suffer?"
To these questions, literally thousands have found the answer in the teachings and practice of Christian Science. Not only has this Science exposed the fatuous nature and origin of pain and suffering, but more important, it has revealed the true and lasting spiritual remedy for them by making plain to mankind the truth concerning God and man in His image. "If we are Christians on all moral questions," writes Mary Baker Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 373), "but are in darkness as to the physical exemption which Christianity includes, then we must have more faith in God on this subject and be more alive to His promises."
The Bible contains many sharp illustrations of the irreconcilability of opposites: A fountain does not send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter; a fruit tree cannot produce both figs and olives. That suffering and harmony fall into the classification of opposites does not occur to many people. Yet, suffering and harmony are contrary to each other. They neither mix nor mingle. One is true; the other is false.
The basis of this logic is the fact that, as Christian Science teaches, God is infinite good without an opposite or equal. God, infinite Spirit, being all-inclusive, all-pervasive, all substance, neither produces, permits, nor blends with an opposite. Evil, then, must be supposititious.
Since good is all—the only reality—evil, though seeming to be actual, cannot in truth exist in the allness of its opposite, infinite Spirit, God. Carrying this reasoning to its logical conclusion, Mrs. Eddy writes (ibid., p. 186), "If pain is as real as the absence of pain, both must be immortal; and if so, harmony cannot be the law of being."
Here Mrs. Eddy clearly draws the issue: Which is true, harmony or suffering? And, in her usual directness, she leaves no doubt that not only is pain false, but harmony is the law of God. Just think of the implications of this statement! When understood, what can it not do to annihilate one of mankind's most feared, most time-honored, and most troublesome foes!
From a material standpoint, the origin and nature of human pain and suffering are conjectural. Material methods of treatment consistently regard suffering as a reality. Centuries of false education and fear have evolved the erroneous concept of man as mortal and as subject to pain and suffering, of mind as being in matter, and of sense as being material. Vast sums of money and thousands of hours have been devoted to alleviating human misery through material research and material medicine. Yet, human suffering still challenges men and baffles them.
Because suffering is a nonentity, a non-actuality, in the real and divine sense, it does not exist where material investigation looks for it, and it does not have the substance which material sense ascribes to it. It is an illusion, the product of mortal belief, and can be understood only as such. So the search for it as something—a reality —is vain, hopeless. Of this vital point Mrs. Eddy says (ibid., p. 86), "Mortal mind sees what it believes as certainly as it believes what it sees."
Almost everybody acknowledges that a dream has no entity; that is, it does not possess substance, intelligence, law, or reality. In physical therapeutics, so-called mental ills are readily classified as delusion and thus are relegated to their proper category of unreality. More and more, as all human ills, both physical and mental, are seen to consist solely of the stuff that dreams are made of will they be correctly classified and successfully treated through spiritual therapy alone.
Christian Science is practicing and demonstrating today that all human ills, with the sense of pain and suffering which accompanies them, are truly healed only as they are seen to have no origin in reality —God and His perfect creation.
The life and teachings of Christ Jesus stir the human heart to grapple with pain and suffering, the foes of human progress, on the basis of spiritual logic, reason, and demonstration. Jesus said (John 14:6), "I am the way, the truth, and the life." And he proved his words by his deeds, healing the sick, raising the dead, and comforting the sorrowing.
The master Christian demonstrated God's power over every phase of human suffering and indicated to his followers that they could and should do likewise. During his three days in the tomb, Christ Jesus illustrated, without the aid of any material remedies, the availability and adequacy of spiritual power to meet and master pain and suffering of the most severe and serious nature. Through the understanding of God and His harmonious government of man, many today are proving that pain and suffering are readily subject to the power and love of God.
The answer to all suffering is to understand the actuality, the naturalness and normalcy of good as God's law governing all reality. At no point can man as God's reflection receive, include, possess, or express a condition or a quality the opposite of his origin, divine Love.
Because God knows no disease, pain, sorrow, or suffering, man, God's image, is incapable of experiencing such ills. Human generation, growth, time, space, death, the so-called hereafter, cannot alter this spiritual fact of being.
Man has never been sick, diseased, in pain, nor has he died and been transmuted by some mysterious process into a state of perfection, nor will he ever be. Actually, man, the man of God's making, is forever in a state of perfect being and can never get out of it.
The acknowledgment of this spiritual fact acts upon the human consciousness as an irresistible, unfailing law of healing. It dispels fear, ushers in trust in God's allness, removes doubt, and establishes calm and tranquillity.
God's law of harmony acts upon human consciousness to nullify educated expectancy of pain under given conditions, breaks the mesmerism of dread, and enables the individual, with calm and poised certainty, to stand stanchly for the demonstration of spiritual dominion over the lie of pain and suffering.
Unafraid, spiritually illumined thought looks right through the ghost of suffering straight into the present fact of man's freedom and harmony. Inspiration stands unmoved by mortal mind's shouts of danger, neglect, carelessness, and rests firmly on the foundation of demonstrable, spiritual understanding.
A student of Christian Science experienced just how practical and dependable is the healing, saving power of divine Love at a time when pain and suffering seemed humanly unbearable. He learned that there is no such thing as unbearable pain or pain of any description, because for every degree of the belief of pain, there is a greater measure of God's love.
For several weeks he could find no ease or comfort in any physical position. Sleepless nights and days dragged on and on. He had sought the help of a Christian Science practitioner, whose steadfast and comforting metaphysical aid he clearly felt as he himself strove to lift his own thought above the sense of suffering into a clearer realization of the presence of good alone.
Finally, one night after several weeks of suffering, he decided he would get out of bed, cease trying to find comfort in matter or a comfortable spot to lay the body, and sit straight up in a chair and just work firmly and continuously, no matter how long this took, to establish in his consciousness the fact that harmony exists in spiritual sense alone—the sense of being conferred by Soul, God. At first, it seemed impossible to remain still and quiet. The student, however, was soon able to take control of his thinking, then of his body. He was then able to sit perfectly still and calm.
Vigorously, clearly, firmly he denied the testimony of material sense and affirmed the presence, power, and unfailing action of the law of Love. He realized that since God, Soul, was his life, he could have no sense or feeling of himself or his condition underived from Soul; that right there, every moment, even while material sense said nothing could be felt but pain, actually nothing was going on but the consciousness of health, harmony, power, and freedom. This line of work was carried on for about three hours without interruption.
At length, the student's thought became so clear in the truth and so strong in the conviction of what he was knowing, that nothing was left in his consciousness to which the sense of pain could attach itself. He could almost feel the dream of pain fade and the influx of harmony take charge of him mentally and bodily. Presently he was completely free; he arose, went back to bed, and slept soundly the rest of the night. That was the end of the trouble.
Christian Science demonstrates painless being to be the present fact, attainable here and now. In Revelation we read (21: 1-4): "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. . . . And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men. . . . And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away."
