We are living at a time when material power is increasing as never before. For this reason, it is well to think about power, to consider what it is, whence its source, what it accomplishes, how it acts. And, most important of all, we must find out how we can help to bring all mankind under the authority of the directive power of Spirit, God.
Power is the ability to act; it is also exerted energy, force, might. Manifestations of power, such as that generated by electricity, steam, and other sources of mechanical energy, have no right direction except as mankind apply intelligence to bring that power under control for useful purposes. Men will continue to direct material power in this way until they no longer seem to need physical power, because divine power will have been fully demonstrated.
Christ Jesus proved that power belongs to God, not to matter. In the Lord's Prayer are these words (Matt. 6:13): "Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever." Christian Science insists that the only power is the might of good and that this power operates as law. God acts through law, and it is through His law that power as well as right direction is manifested. Right direction always accompanies genuine good, for right direction is inherent in the wisdom, love, intelligence, and integrity that are elements of good. Reflecting such elements, one will never make mistakes, will never fail to express the will, or law, of God.
To obey God's law of good and thus embody His will is to enable one to prove the Father's directive power in human lives. The purpose of the Ten Commandments and of the Sermon on the Mount is to bring divine direction to human action, to subordinate that action to God's will. Obeying God's law of good, one may, for example, use his hand to give a friendly lift to someone who has fallen on slippery ice. Human will moves the hand, but it does so under the loving direction of God.
This does not imply, however, that God is conscious of the personal deed; it does imply that divine direction is embodied in the quality of love. Under the angry impulsion of mortal mind, human will might have moved one hatefully to use the same hand to knock the person down.
From this illustration we can see that if one's thinking moves in grooves of evil impulsion, one's body loses lawful direction. And it loses this direction not only in personal actions but in physical functions, because the thought which controls the body has lost contact with the higher direction of God. Mary Baker Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 187), "The valves of the heart, opening and closing for the passage of the blood, obey the mandate of mortal mind as directly as does the hand, admittedly moved by the will."
Every expression of temper, disloyalty, impurity, dishonesty, and negativeness means that human thought has turned away from divine direction. And every physical disorder or human discord evidences the same turning away. The purpose of Christian Science healing is to bring the directive power of God to the human body, just as it brings that power to one's character and moral behavior through obedience to God's law. Indeed, good health includes divine direction as assuredly as do good morals.
The real man, God's image, is perpetually under the control of divine law. This perfect law manifests power, and the directive action of God is inseparable from the law by which He controls His universe. To heal or to be healed, one must understand and submit to the directive action which operates through divine law.
Mrs. Eddy says of the Master's method (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 190), "Jesus gave his disciples (students) power over all manner of diseases; and the Bible was written in order that all peoples, in all ages, should have the same opportunity to become students of the Christ, Truth, and thus become God-endued with power (knowledge of divine law) and with 'signs following.'"
One might define diseases as instances in which normal direction of the body is lost because God's governing law is not understood. And the demonstration of the truth that God controls all being through law restores the body to normal health. Hence we should establish in our thought the understanding of the ruling presence and directing action of God. Then we shall prove that so-called mortal mind cannot act lawlessly to bring about disorganization, deterioration, malformation, disintegration, and disease, all of which indicate degeneration of directive power.
The belief that the cellular action of the body can become insubordinate, lose direction, and thus cause physical abnormalities is destroyed by the understanding of man's spiritual status and of his relation to God as His expression. The reflection of divine attributes will prevent undirected action by virtue of its bringing the patient's thought into submission to the truth that includes divine direction.
Take the laws of adhesion, cohesion, and attraction, which, according to mortal mind's belief, hold matter in its various formations. Christian Science reverses the fable that such laws are blind, unintelligent forces, which can lose direction; and Science restores these laws to their true functions as orderly manifestations of divine Mind. Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health (p. 124), "Adhesion, cohesion, and attraction are properties of Mind." And in the next paragraph, continuing her discussion of mental forces, she says, "Human knowledge calls them forces of matter; but divine Science declares that they belong wholly to divine Mind, are inherent in this Mind, and so restores them to their rightful home and classification."
If disease seems to cause the body to change its structure lawlessly, we can seek a true understanding of adhesion, cohesion, and attraction, which include divine direction and which, when demonstrated, prevent insubordination to God. One should realize that man is a spiritual being, who adheres to divine Principle, who coheres with all ideas in perfect unity under the one Principle, God, and who lives in a state of constant attraction to God and to nothing else.
In this way one brings human minds and bodies and experiences into full obedience to the directive power of Spirit. Health is restored because human thought is yielding to the fact that God is one infinite, governing Mind and that man, Mind's idea, is under the perpetual control of Mind.
God's gracious will is the law of all being, and His will directs the entire action of His perfect creation. The conviction of this truth is growing in human thought, and as it increases, the perfect order of being appears. The understanding that life is not haphazard or uncertain is becoming apparent as more and more individuals demonstrate the ceaseless, loving direction of divine power.
