Whatever meets our human needs and heals us is the concern of us all. And when this help is made available in terms of logical and demonstrable spiritual law, as it is in Christian Science, it merits the deepest consideration on the part of all thinkers. One essential aspect in the application of this healing law is stated by Mrs. Eddy on page 269 of Science and Health. There she writes, "Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul."
It may not always seem easy to resolve "things into thoughts." But let us note that Mrs. Eddy tells us that metaphysics does the resolving. Human will has no part in it.
The student of Christian Science reasons that because God is infinite intelligence and all-inclusive Spirit, He is the creator of perfect spiritual ideas and of naught else. In real being there is no matter or even a belief in matter. The ideas of Soul exist now and have always existed in the divine Mind, and they forever express the nature, quality, and character of divinity.
Christian Science teaches that man, being the complete reflection or compound idea of God, embodies all right ideas. Thus in our true selfhood we are always in the state of reflecting the spiritual idea, which, humanly speaking, we may need to discern. It is right to affirm this truth, which claims that in reality we are always at the point of knowing what we need to know right when we need it. There can be no time lag in Mind's manifestation of itself. Therefore it is through our sincere and alert application of spiritual truth and through our trust in God as the fount of all good, rather than through any personal effort, that Mind's ever-present healing ideas are demonstrated as immediately available to meet our human need.
Through trust in God human consciousness also is purified, and greater freedom from the cloying pleasures, the limitations, and the penalties of materialism is experienced. The ideas of Soul, which are reflected by man, manifest wisdom, harmony, strength, health. These spiritual ideas are protected, controlled, and maintained by the law of God; they are never vulnerable and never at the mercy of circumstances or of the beliefs of age, disease, accident, and decay.
We should humbly acknowledge the specific ideas and spiritual qualities that are the actual realities and relevant facts in every human situation, cherishing and trusting them rather than the mortal counterfeits called persons, places, and things. We should think through to the truth of being instead of accepting the negative impressions of material sense testimony. As we do so, we become more aware of the presence and nature of reality; and this harmonious, spiritual reality unfolds naturally, spontaneously, and irresistibly as our own present experience. Thus we come to realize that everything truly good that we love and value in life is safe in God's keeping, constantly protected and renewed by His ever-operative and omnipotent law.
The spiritual ideas which are forever reflected by the real man are not of the past or of the future, nor are they to be found in some place or situation where we are not, nor does Love delay their appearing until we have more knowledge or experience. Love's ideas are where we are now; they are present, active, and actual now. These blessed ideas are being reflected in individual consciousness right where the false concepts—the so-called objects, conditions, pleasures, and sufferings of mortal sense— appear to be.
When we expectantly turn to the divine Mind in love and humility we are inevitably made aware of the spiritual truth that is needed to heal and to help us. Is not each and every Christly idea always ours by reflection? And because it is of God, it is pure, selfless, substantial, good, useful, satisfying, effective, and everlasting. Once such a truth has been discerned and demonstrated, we know that we can rely on it without reservation.
Many years ago, after visiting an elderly relative, my wife and I were returning home by motorcycle over a stretch of high moorland. It was in the depth of winter and snow began to fall. Soon a blizzard was raging, and it was so bitterly cold that I found increasing difficulty in controlling the machine. My wife called out that she was so cold that she was in danger of falling from the pillion.
Up to that moment we had just persevered, hoping to get through. But now something more was needed. Our thoughts turned to God, and at once the clear realization came that all Life is Love and that Love is warm. Instantly my hands and feet tingled with warmth, and my wife called out, "I have gone warm all over." We gratefully continued our journey through the storm and an hour or two later arrived home in comfort and safety.
However desperate the human situation seems to be, the spiritual fact, the truth of Mind, is all that is present or with power. An apparently dangerous situation or a diseased condition is merely false belief or illusion. Its apparent existence is in supposititious mortal mind, not in matter, as it seems to be. Whatever the claim, it is a facet of this so-called mind's perverted and false sense of being, and we need not, and should not, allow ourselves to be stampeded into accepting it as true. Right where the trouble seems to be, there is always the unbroken harmony of real being!
Mrs. Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 74): "Christ Jesus' sense of matter was the opposite of that which mortals entertain: his nativity was a spiritual and immortal sense of the ideal world. His earthly mission was to translate substance into its original meaning, Mind." And farther on she adds, "His demonstration of Spirit virtually vanquished matter and its supposed laws."
To Christ Jesus only that which was the manifestation of God, of Life, Truth, and Love, was real. Hatred and fear, disease and destructiveness, lack and death, were to him false and baseless aspects of the illusory dream of mortal sense. Because he understood his unity with the Father, divine Mind, spiritual reality was ever plain to him. When fear and ugliness, distress and suffering, appeared to be present, Jesus remained unafraid.
The Master utterly trusted and obeyed that which his Father Mind revealed to him as the actual and substantial spiritual fact. He did not limit himself to theorizing about Spirit; he walked in the Spirit, living and acting in accordance with that which he knew to be divinely true, even to the extent of walking upon the water and raising the dead.
That our Way-shower regarded these proofs of spiritual power as essential witnesses to the truth and to the demonstrability of his teaching is indicated by his words (John 5:36), "I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me."
Since creation consists of constantly unfolding spiritual ideas, creation must be spiritually mental, for where else but in consciousness can ideas unfold? As we ponder this truth we draw closer to the divine universe, which has its source and being in Mind, the Mind which we in reality reflect. Then the false sense of man as mortal and of the universe as material begins to yield to the light and warmth of spiritual consciousness, and Christ, Truth, illumines human thought.
Most thoughtful people accept the fact that they can know and feel only that which is in their own consciousness. But often we forget this and think of our problems as largely material, as having existence outside thought, and this belief tends to make us afraid. But instead of so believing, the Christian Scientist is alert to the fact that error is wholly mental.
The conviction that evil is subjective, falsely mental, gives one dominion over it. In the degree that an error is fearlessly seen as a lying and impossible suggestion rather than as a reality, it loses its power to hurt. Then as the truth is realized, healing takes place, and it takes place first and last in human thought. The light of Truth eliminates the darkness of fear, ignorance, and sin, and the result is healing. The ideas of Soul, although utterly unknown to the material senses, are the enduring substance of all that we can humanly need or legitimately hope for.
As we progressively resolve "things into thoughts," we become more aware of divine ideas; and as we love them for their own sake and hold them warmly and obediently in thought, we shall find them evidenced in our lives in an abundance of love, health, peace, security, usefulness, and joy.
