THROUGHOUT her writings, Mary Baker Eddy insists upon God as ever-present good and consequently upon evil as never present, save as the misleading assumption of a mind that does not exist. Although this insistence may sound inconsistent to some persons, it does not warrant anyone's supercilious dismissal of the subject. If it be true that God is ever-present good, this truth will one day be recognized everywhere as the most important knowledge in all the world for mankind to acquire.
The teachings of Christian Science are far in advance of what the world as a whole still believes to be true. However, Christian Scientists do not ignore the world's present need of help physically, mentally, and morally. Rightly understood and utilized, Christian Science meets the world's needs by revealing the remedy for all human ills, ills which, owing to their illusive mental nature, can be truly mastered only by spiritually mental means.
In presenting for the world's consideration the reality of God and His ever-present good and the counterfeit nature of mortal mind and its material concepts, Mrs. Eddy is not proposing a mere innovation. The ever-presence of God, good, must be and is the eternal, changeless, demonstrable fact. Christian Science should be recognized as no human invention, but as the scientific discovery of the ages.
In their ignorance of spiritual reality, men have permitted themselves to be mentally blinded to the omnipresence of good and have thereby suffered unhappy consequences. Nevertheless the wholly harmonious nature of true being remains unaffected and unchanged.
In its presentation of God as ever-present good and of man as Mind's compound idea, Christian Science is revealed as "the unfolding of true metaphysics." Mrs. Eddy tells us in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 69), "Christian Science is the unfolding of true metaphysics; that is, of Mind, or God, and His attributes." And then she goes on to say: "Science rests on Principle and demonstration. The Principle of Christian Science is divine. Its rule is, that man shall utilize the divine power."
The perfect premise and perfect conclusion of Christian Science seem incomprehensible to material sense. The human mind is obliged to grow into an appreciation of that which is natural and normal from the standpoint of divine metaphysics. Out of his own illumined experience, the disciple Peter wrote of the necessity of growing "in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ" (II Pet. 3:18).
Spiritual growth is the result of spiritual understanding and activity, in which divine ideas, hidden and remote to finite sense, unfold with every advancing step Spiritward, and these ideas, hospitably entertained, are always capable of demonstration.
The Science of true being reveals that spiritual man, the only man who truly exists, is the divine idea, image, or likeness of God; or, to put it differently, the real man reflects God's awareness of His own uncontested and uncontestable allness. The human person or finite concept does not fully grasp the vastness of this fact.
However, one can begin immediately to emerge from the material sense of existence into the recognition of spiritual reality by correcting, or dispelling from thought, the obvious errors of so-called mortal mind. Thus spiritual perception is at first nourished in the understanding by the simple truths which human consciousness is presently capable of entertaining. Everyone may follow Peter's counsel (I Pet. 2:1,2), "Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby."
Christian Science reveals ever-present good as the divine Principle of being. It is obviously impossible for one to grow into the understanding of God and man entirely through another's demonstration.
It is true that one may greatly assist another in the overcoming of this particular error or that, just as Christ Jesus helped his disciples solve what to them seemed to be difficult problems. Nevertheless, it should always be borne in mind that individual demonstration is an important means of growth Spiritward.
Accordingly, each one of us is confronted with the responsibility of gaining for himself, soon or late, the understanding of God as omnipresent good. Until, by one's utilizing the power of God, good, this understanding becomes one's own, one cannot truly demonstrate it.
The disciples were greatly uplifted during their apostleship with the Master; but when the steadily unfolding spiritual-mindedness of Jesus advanced him beyond what his disciples were then capable of perceiving, some of them returned to their nets. They again became fishermen.
The resurrection and ascension of Jesus compelled them to lean no more upon his personal presence, but to rely upon the divine Principle of his teaching. Then they were able to go forth on the strength of their own understanding of God, good, and to utilize the divine power in the way that Jesus had shown them over and over again.
All of this means that it is impossible for a person to progress in the Science of ever-present good merely by associating with those who are daily demonstrating their understanding of it through divine healing. Nor does he rise in his understanding of God through social, political, or any other external influence or expedient. One grows only by way of the good which he permits to unfold in his own consciousness and by utilizing that good in actively and lovingly overcoming, in his everyday experience, the illusions of material sense. Mrs. Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 68), "Christian Science presents unfoldment not accretion; it manifests no material growth from molecule to mind, but an impartation of the divine Mind to man and the universe."
Christ Jesus' healing work was due to his own utilization of the power of divine Principle, God, as ever-present good. He showed conclusively not for his era only but for the ages to come that evil, whether appearing as matter or as carnal mentality, is unreal.
It should be clear to us that it was this utilization of infinite good as the one and only Mind, self-existent cause, or divine Principle, which enabled Jesus to be the Saviour of the world. By this we mean that the utilization of the power of God as omnipresent good is capable of saving mankind from bondage to the mesmerism of mortal existence. To the young man who had referred to him as "good Master," Jesus said (Mark 10:18), "Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God," even the one, indivisible, impersonal, ever-present good.
The divine power, which is capable of overcoming all phases of error, alias the materially mental illusion, is utilized only as one departs from the finite, corporeal, dual sense of existence and lets the Mind which is God be his Mind, even as it was the Mind of the Master.
The utilization of the divine healing power through the individual perception of divine Principle and divine idea as the sum total of reality constitutes the necessary growth out of the unreal realm of human concepts. It lifts us into the recognition of spiritual perfection, which Christ Jesus revealed as the absolutely true status of being. On page 103 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," Mrs. Eddy writes, "Infinite perfection is unfolded as man attains the stature of man in Christ Jesus by means of the Science which Jesus taught and practised."
It is axiomatic that one becomes outwardly like the thoughts which he is habitually entertaining both consciously and unconsciously. Hence material-mindedness is inevitably manifested in material living and in lack of healing power.
Holding thought unwaveringly to spiritual reality, to perfect Principle embracing its own all-inclusive and exclusive idea, has the inevitable effect of bringing about individual progress toward the physical, mental, and moral harmony which is inseparable from the demonstration of God as ever-present good. The material, discordant sense of existence thereby diminishes day by day, and spiritual consciousness increasingly unfolds. In other words, by progressively surrendering the belief in minds many to the one and only Mind, which is synonymous with ever-present good, we can say with Paul (II Cor. 3:18), "We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord."
