WHEN CHRIST JESUS encountered the man born blind, as reported in the ninth chapter of John, his disciples asked him whether the man's condition was the outcome of some sin either he or his parents had committed. Jesus handled this erroneous theological concept firmly by stating, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." Thus he repudiated the doctrine of inherited sin long held by the Jews, and, at the same time, he denied the claim of disease based upon the so-called law of material causation or heredity.
We can see the full relevance to this case of the true record of creation found in the first chapter of Genesis. There we read, "God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." The account goes on to affirm the dominion with which God's perfect image and likeness is endowed. Christian Science teaches that such dominion is nothing less than the kingdom of God in man. For the first Christian healer, blindness was entirely baseless, causeless, and unreal.
The disciples, not convinced of the present activity of spiritual causation, had expected their Master to comment upon the blind man's past in order to account for the material condition from which he suffered. However, Jesus did not attempt to explain error but instead disposed of it.
Now it may reasonably be asked, "Are we merely to ignore the awful spectacle of sin and sickness universally evident today?" It will be particularly helpful in answering this question to refer to this dictionary definition of "hallucination": "Perception of objects with no reality: experience of sensations with no external cause." The hallucination is very real to the sufferer until it is recognized as an illusion and consequently removed from consciousness. In just this way, it may be seen that all suffering is of a mental and necessarily hallucinatory nature.
In the light of the true record of creation, in which man is revealed as reflecting the perfection and dominion of his creator, sin and disease have no place or reality. This is the creation which, according to Genesis, God saw, and it was good. Is it not reasonable, then, to infer that the whole of evil, of sin, of disease, and of death, is illusory, an utter hallucination? There is no real basis or cause for that which seems to exist outside divine Mind's perfect creation. To spiritual sense, there is no hallucination —no sin, sickness, or death; nothing is real but Mind's ideas and the enactments of Mind's wisdom.
On page 207 of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy writes: "There is but one primal cause. Therefore there can be no effect from any other cause, and there can be no reality in aught which does not proceed from this great and only cause."
Today the false law of material causation is constantly challenging the alert thinker. It is indigenous to the nature of evil, or error, to argue for its establishment as history, to claim reality in human consciousness as unchangeable fact. Yet we have divine authority for knowing that nothing has ever happened to man except the unfoldment of good, the perpetuating of his natural dominion as a God-created idea.
With beautiful succinctness the author of Ecclesiastes translated the temporal dimensions of past and future into their spiritual actuality and pointed directly to the primacy and supremacy of the "great and only cause." He wrote (3:14, 15): "I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it. ... That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past."
His recognition of the present reality and exclusiveness of spiritual causation approached the spiritual insight of John, who, writing centuries after him, declared: "All things were made by [God]; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men" (1:3, 4). These words of the apostle constitute an unequivocal acknowledgment of the uninterrupted continuity of God's creation.
To regard these great messages as merely of historical interest would be to rob ourselves of their present liberating impact. Both preacher and apostle are referring to the present saving power and healing efficacy of the truth inherent in the first record of creation, that is, man's spiritual perfection.
Mrs. Eddy says on page 258 of Science and Health, "God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis." In such developing lies man's history—the irreversible progression of his spiritual being.
A veteran of World War II spent a period of time in British hospitals following his medical discharge from the Royal Air Force, suffering from what was regarded as a grave psychopathic condition. When treatment by a number of psychiatrists had effected no noticeable improvement, he was pronounced incurable. At this point Christian Science was brought into his experience. He turned to a Christian Science practitioner for help.
Unlike the psychiatrists, whose attempts to heal had been tied to analysis of so-called environmental and hereditary influences, the practitioner referred the young man at once to his true spiritual identity. He was led to see that this identity was nothing less than that of the man in whom God expresses "the infinite idea forever developing itself," the image and likeness of perfect Mind, whose spiritual heritage is forever intact. Thought was no longer focused upon the mortal record of psychopathic abnormality, but was turned away to a recognition and contemplation of the fundamentally normal perfection of God's own beloved creation. The young man came to realize that the harmony of this perfect creation was ever appearing as his true, immortal record.
He saw now that he possessed no past beyond the uninterrupted continuity of his spiritual being. Through constant, patient reasoning along these lines, he was led to reject the falsity of any law of material causation and grasped something of his everlasting innocence and dominion over every erroneous suggestion. As his understanding of spiritual causation unfolded, he recognized his true spiritual heritage, his true history. He caught a glimpse of the Christ, "the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" (John 1:9), and in a short time he was completely healed.
Only good is real, because in reality God is the only Mind of man. We are aware of this divine Mind in the proportion that we turn constantly and resolutely away from the running commentary of mortal mind, the hallucinatory images of mortal sense testimony, and instead look earnestly at the true record of creation, the truth of man's dominion that is daily unfolding in human consciousness. A convincing corollary to this observation is to be found in "Unity of Good," where Mrs. Eddy states (pp. 50, 51): "Matter and evil cannot be conscious, and consciousness should not be evil. Adopt this rule of Science, and you will discover the material origin, growth, maturity, and death of sinners, as the history of man, disappears, and the everlasting facts of being appear, wherein man is the reflection of immutable good."
