Human theories have been endeavoring for generations to explain causes and effects in, of, and as matter. However, since the discovery of Christian Science in 1866 by Mrs. Eddy, thought has been turning away from the beliefs of a material man and universe. In many fields of activity there are encouraging signs that mental causation is being accepted.
The newcomer to Christian Science might well ask how one deals with the question of separating what appears to be the reality of matter from what this Science tells us is the only reality—the spiritual.
Paul wrote to the people of Corinth (II Cor. 6:17, 18), "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." This exhortation is of importance in following the line of thought leading to the understanding of Spirit. While the words used by Paul had originally to do with those who bore the sacred vessels that were returned to Jerusalem, as recorded in Isaiah(52:11), yet Paul was quoting these words in context with his exhortation to the church members at Corinth to strengthen and purify their thought in the knowledge and ministry of the Christ.
He was referring to the separation which has to be made in thought between Truth and error, good and evil. This would bring to the Corinthians the recognition of God and their relationship to Him. In effect, he was telling them how to spiritualize thought, how to demonstrate the ability to come out from a sense of a material creation, how to be aware of spiritual realities.
In Christian Science we learn that we have to come out and be separate, a purely mental process. In this process the understanding of God as the only Mind, the source of all intelligence, elevates thought above the falsity of sense testimony, with its claims of intelligence and reality in matter, into the realm of the real.
The understanding that there is one perfect spiritual creation, as recorded in the first chapter of Genesis, necessarily precludes the possibility of a material creation, which, after all, is not a creation but a belief in something apart and separate from God.
St. Paul's words have a correlative passage given to us by our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, in Science and Health, where she writes (p. 41), "Like our Master, we must depart from material sense into the spiritual sense of being." Christ Jesus, who was endowed with the full and complete understanding of man and his relationship to God, said, "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30). His spiritualized thought enabled him to heal, to instruct his disciples to heal, and, as the record in the New Testament shows, to establish the power to heal for all who follow his teaching.
Throughout her writings Mrs. Eddy is continually urging her readers to spiritualize thought and telling them how to do so. She writes (Science and Health, p. 209), "Spiritual sense is a conscious, constant capacity to understand God." When we study our Leader's writings, it is of interest to note that the words she was led to use in giving the world the pure Science of Christianity often have a greater significance than is at first apparent.
We may perhaps have grown into the habit of accepting certain words as having only one, or perhaps a limited, meaning. The use of a dictionary can often reveal a far deeper meaning, resulting in growth in understanding and in illumination of thought. Thus we intelligently follow the path Spiritward.
The understanding which recognizes man as purely spiritual, entirely apart from a material concept of creation, is also aware of the inseparability of God and man. We know that an understanding of God is the basis from which we have to work in order to gain this spiritual altitude of thought.
To maintain alertness and activity of thought based on an awareness of God as infinite Life, Truth, and Love is to be truly conscious. Aggressive mental suggestion may try to interfere with one's ability to demonstrate such a state of thought, claiming to divert one by attraction to human personality, by enjoyment of the senses, by apathy, depression, and perhaps sheer laziness.
The alert thought recognizes such suggestions as the attempt of mortal mind to parade as something apart from God, claiming to mesmerize and hold thought to the belief that man is a mortal who can be controlled by sense testimony; whereas the fact is that he is an immortal, governed only by God. Through an understanding of this fact we meet and master evil suggestions and are able to recognize their true nature—nothingness.
One of the more subtle forms of suggestion that tries to interfere with the stability of thought, which is ever aware of the spiritual nature of things, is the endeavor to sidetrack our thinking into channels where we find ourselves contemplating the good or bad personality of others or the nature or the working out of human problems. This is where we have to learn the art of self-discipline in order to exercise our God-given dominion over sense testimony, persistently claiming our right to know the truth with all the intelligence Mind gives to its ideas. Thus we "touch not the unclean thing," as Paul said. We refuse to accept as a reality anything unlike good.
We develop our spiritual capacity by steadfastly acknowledging and confirming our power to receive, maintain, and utilize the truths which are revealed to us through our study of the Bible and our Leader's writings. Man, as the idea of God, is endowed with complete power to receive, retain, and have the benefit of all the good coming to him continuously from God.
As we develop our "conscious, constant capacity to understand God," we separate ourselves from the material world, and we begin to glimpse that in reality we have never been in materiality. When we learn that man has always coexisted with God and ever will be one with Him in the realm of Spirit, the realm of the real, we see that we have not been born into and are not going to die out of a material creation. We begin to understand infinity.
The demand stated by Paul to the Corinthians contains a promise that when we have separated our thought from the belief in the reality of matter or of any existence apart from God and realize that we have never been part of matter's claim to reality, then we shall be rewarded in accordance with God's words, "I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters." Thus we arrive at the recognition that in reality, now and forever, we are the sons and daughters of God, that we have a loving Father-Mother, God, tenderly caring for us at all times and under all conditions and circumstances in which we may seem to be humanly involved.
In "Miscellaneous Writings," our Leader states(p. 185): "Self-renunciation of all that constitutes a so-called material man, and the acknowledgment and achievement of his spiritual identity as the child of God, is Science that opens the very flood-gates of heaven; whence good flows into every avenue of being, cleansing mortals of all uncleanness, destroying all suffering, and demonstrating the true image and likeness."
As we become aware of spirituality as the reality, and our true identity is revealed by the pure Science of Christianity, we develop our capacity to apply the truths as they unfold to our uplifted thought in healing ourselves and others of sickness and sin. Thereby we are surely demonstrating that we have come out and are separate from the concept of a creation apart from God.
