The value of spirituality is priceless. Christ Jesus said (Rom. 8:6), "To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace."
As students of Christian Science we are learning the great value of spiritual-mindedness. We are striving to spiritualize thought, to accept and to utilize the spiritual truths constantly coming to us from the one and only Mind, God. Only spiritual thoughts are true thoughts, for only spiritual thoughts reflect the absolute facts of real being.
To spiritualize thought, that is, to see and acknowledge God as the only and perfect cause and His spiritual manifestation as the only and perfect effect, brings betterment to every aspect of human living. The loving Father has only good to impart, and the more we recognize and acknowledge with gratitude that God is our only source of existence—the only source of our thought, of our character, of all that is really true about us—the more the way is opened for His goodness and love to abound in our experience. Divine Love is infinite good and is always freely bestowing unlimited good upon man. Spiritualized thought perceives and acknowledges this fact.
If error argues that our capacity for spiritual knowing is limited, then let us use this capacity to the utmost. As we eagerly, gladly, and persistently apply to human problems all the understanding we have, this understanding will increase, will double over and again, until we are in possession of the full range of spiritual perception, logic, and power. But when we bury our talent in materialism, in mental apathy and idleness, in selfishness, in faith in and fear of matter, the potency of our work diminishes, and we lag behind in spiritual progress.
It is spiritualization of thought which has made progress possible in every age; which has brought forth such great thinkers and doers as Moses, Elijah, Christ Jesus, and our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy. It is ever-increasing spiritualization of thought which enables us to heal the sick with ever-increasing promptness and finality. Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (p. 95), "We approach God, or Life, in proportion to our spirituality, our fidelity to Truth and Love; and in that ratio we know all human need and are able to discern the thought of the sick and the sinning for the purpose of healing them." All true healing work is accomplished through spiritual knowing.
Spirituality, profound in perception and comprehension, is the natural status of the real man. Employed in human experience, spirituality demands much more than the mere acceptance and use of the letter of Christian Science. It includes conscious striving to be and to do good, proper self-esteem, love, faith, energy, courage, understanding, indeed, every Spirit-derived quality. Spiritual qualities, utilized in human thought, dissolve materialism into nothingness. They dissipate, clear out, annihilate all evil's claim of a force resistant to good.
In reality there is not, and never has been, a force which can or does resist the power of pure spirituality. The only forces that really exist are the forces of omnipotent Spirit. These forces act as spiritual law to destroy every claim of an opposing force; hence the invincibility of spirituality.
Our Leader points out the mental qualities that claim to war against spirituality and admonishes us to resist them. She refers to these qualities as "the adamant of error" in a passage from Science and Health which reads (p. 242), "In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error,—self-will, self-justification, and self-love,—which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death."
There is nothing hard or obdurate about spiritual thought, and if there is anything hard or obdurate about ourselves, then materialism is claiming place and presence in our experience over and above spirituality. Spiritual thought is firm for the right, but it is tender, patient, and kind. With the strength of Love, it dissolves the obduracy of mortal mind and proves conclusively that there is no impenetrably hard error— nothing which Truth cannot dissolve.
Our refuge from materialism and its woes lies in listening for and utilizing the thoughts which come to us from God. These thoughts guide the true practitioner in all his healing work. Uplifted, spiritualized consciousness imparts an uplifted, spiritualized sense of existence. This not only banishes the belief in disease but restores to the needy one his own spiritual realization of well-being as the son of God.
The unselfed healer remembers the words of Christ Jesus, "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do" (John 5:19). He knows that it is seeing, or understanding, God and the absoluteness of His spiritual law which enables him to demonstrate this law. He further knows that the healing work in Christian Science is not accomplished through the influence of one human mind over another human mind any more than this is true in the solving of a mathematical problem. Just as the mathematician demonstrates the exactness of the principle, rule, and law of numbers in whatever problem is before him, so the Christian Science healer demonstrates the harmony of the divine Principle, rule, and law of divine metaphysics in whatever difficulty is brought to him. When error along any line is seen as a mistake, that which is true becomes apparent. Thus correction, or healing, takes place.
The more fully the thought of the healer is a spiritual transparency through which the light of Truth and Love shines, the more surely he is able to demonstrate God's good law. Jesus said, "The Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth" (John 5:20) . The consecrated worker, aware of God's loving care and guidance, knows that "the Father loveth the Son"; he knows that God shows to him all "that himself doeth." Thus there is revealed to him the hereness, the kindness, the power of God's law and its complete adequacy under all circumstances.
It is through spiritual thought that we comprehend our Leader's explanation of the Science of being. Material sense—material so-called thought—cannot understand the Science of Mind because it has no spirituality with which to perceive spiritual truth. Materialism is not realism, as it so often boasts. It is superstitious belief, which is dissipated by spiritual knowing. The Principle and application of Christian Science can be understood and the proof of its healing power accepted only through spirituality, through receptivity to God and His thoughts.
We need always to remember that in reality we are spiritual; that our senses are spiritual; that innately we love good. We are not matter mortals, with desires apart from Spirit. We live in Spirit, in which there can be no consciousness of disease, no consciousness of distress or destruction, no consciousness of any perishable or deteriorating element, no belief in degeneration. We live in Love and in the blissful consciousness of Love's all-presence, in which there is no sense of envy, hatred, or revenge. We live in Life and in the consciousness of Life's eternality, in which there is no belief in time, no assent to mortal frustration, no dread of a hurried trip from the cradle to the grave.
In reality man is indestructible and harmonious. Spirituality is the essence of his being. This spirituality saves us from human woes. It enables us to understand man as being not material but spiritual, holy, loving, fearless, unlimited. Spiritual consciousness rejoices in all good and discerns and rejects all error as naturally, positively, and effectively as light rejects darkness.
Mrs. Eddy knew the priceless value of spirituality to humankind; she recognized that it is essential to health and to all well-being; hence her great effort to instill it in human thought. On page 99 of Science and Health she says, "The calm, strong currents of true spirituality, the manifestations of which are health, purity, and self-immolation, must deepen human experience, until the beliefs of material existence are seen to be a bald imposition, and sin, disease, and death give everlasting place to the scientific demonstration of divine Spirit and to God's spiritual, perfect man."
