Dear to many Americans is Hawthorne's tale "The Great Stone Face," the story of a little boy who cherished the promise that some day "a child should be born hereabouts, who was destined to become the greatest and noblest personage of his time, and whose countenance, in manhood, should bear an exact resemblance" to the noble features of a face which nature had carved on the side of a nearby mountain. Years later, advanced in wisdom by a life devoted to good, he addressed a neighborhood gathering. Suddenly the audience recognized and acclaimed that it was he himself who had fulfilled the old prophecy, that it was he who through his noble life had grown to image the Great Stone Face.
A similar transformation is experienced individually by each consecrated student of Christian Science who devotes thought and effort to the understanding and practice of its teachings. As one learns to keep thought filled with Truth and Love, he naturally comes to reflect and manifest the Godlike qualities which his study teaches him to love and understand. Thus thought by thought and demonstration by demonstration he is reborn and comes to express spiritual beauty and loveliness.
In this new birth, false beliefs pass from thought and hence from experience. Many healings result. To the world they may seem to be mere physical healings, but to the individual they mean also the lifting of consciousness above material beliefs—above temptations and the sordidness or fear of evil. They mean the awakening of consciousness to a realization of the present reality of heaven, which, Jesus taught, is within us and which Mrs. Eddy defines as harmony (see Science and Health, p. 587). The new birth changes outlooks, motives, methods, aspirations, goals; and life is lifted above a sense of mere existence into one of being at one with God, of dwelling in "the secret place of the most High" (Ps. 91:1).
