ONE day, when I was driving in a small town, I found that I needed to replenish the gasoline supply in my car. However, I made a call in the town, and my thought being concerned with the subject of the call, I forgot to stop at a gasoline station. As I drove along the country road on my return home, the car stopped. The fuel tank was empty.
Humanly speaking, this was a stupid, unnecessary thing to let occur. Yet, the understanding that God, divine Principle, is the source and substance of man's being made it spiritually correct and possible for me to declare with understanding and honesty that my true and only self, the reflection of ever-present, divine Principle, divine intelligence, had never made a mistake.
Self-condemnation was rejected immediately. Had it been accepted, it would have brought with it the accompanying belief of penalty. But neither condemnation nor penalty is known to God or His reflection, man, and neither one characterizes the consciousness in which Christian Science demonstration takes place. Jesus' rule for healing was (Matt. 5:48), "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."
Knocking at the door of a nearby ranch house to secure aid, I found no one at home. However, I continued to rejoice in the truth of man, which Mrs. Eddy presents in Science and Health where she writes, "He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas" (p. 475). Despite all material evidence suggesting the contrary, I insisted that as the reflection of God I included all that was needed to express the right idea of transportation.
Returning to the roadside I found a delivery truck approaching. To my great delight it was equipped as a mobile gasoline station to service the mechanical equipment in the nearby fields. It replenished my tank.
Here was an immediate proof of the practicality of the spiritual fact that God is the divine Principle of man and the universe. I rejoiced that no matter how absentminded or stupid one's human actions may seem to be at times, the divine Mind is ever present to annul the beliefs of condemnation, penalty, lack, and postponement of good.
In the light of this awakening to true identification the counterfeit nature of the habits of thought that would contribute to making such a mistake, carelessness and negligence in this instance, was necessarily uncovered. The tendency to indulge these counterfeits yields as spiritual alertness and obedience to divine Principle are expressed. The individual rises higher to find himself less and less tempted to indulge counterfeit qualities and thus incur the penalty inherent in mortal mind thinking.
Everyone desires to know how to work out his problems. Efforts to find ways and means to do so virtually constitute the world's activities in one form or another— systems of philosophy, theology, government, science, medicine, and business economy. Merchants of every sort are busy selling their ideas for better living. Some of these systems are progressively enlightened, but many of them lead the individual into continued and further bondage to the belief that life and intelligence are confined in the limitations of matter.
Truth shows that the way out of all difficulties is the way of the Christ—the understanding and the living of the coincidence of God and man. Mrs. Eddy writes in "Unity of Good" (p. 9): "The talent and genius of the centuries have wrongly reckoned. They have not based upon revelation their arguments and conclusions as to the source and resources of being,—its combinations, phenomena, and outcome— but have built instead upon the sand of human reason. They have not accepted the simple teaching and life of Jesus as the only true solution of the perplexing problem of human existence."
On page 429 of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy quotes Jesus' words (John 8: 51), "If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death," and comments, "That statement is not confined to spiritual life, but includes all the phenomena of existence."
In Christian Science we do not demonstrate what seem to be material phenomena. We can demonstrate only spiritual facts, truths that are eternal and infinite and that evidence the presence of God, divine Spirit. We demonstrate the spiritual ideas which the objects of time and sense counterfeit. The spiritual facts or ideas reflecting the undeviating nature of Principle remain the same always. Understood and demonstrated, they act as the law of adjustment to the human belief and appear in that human form which meets the human need.
In the Gospel of John it is related that the disciples saw Jesus walking on the sea toward them. When he entered their ship, "immediately the ship was at the land whither they went" (6:21). However, at one time the Master's means of transportation was an ass, as on the day toward the end of his ministry when he entered Jerusalem.
Truth is applicable to every human problem. The same Christliness that enabled Jesus to demonstrate immediate presence enabled him to restore the widow of Nain's son to her alive. The Master did not comfort her with kind words and emotional sympathy, only to leave her humanly desolate. He comforted her with the living presence of her restored son.
The Christliness that gave the Master such practical power to meet the human need is ever present and available to every man, woman, and child here and now in the proportion that the individual is willing to live his true nature as the son of God. Material circumstances are powerless to prevent those who are willing to let the human yield to the divine from experiencing freedom from the bondage imposed by materiality.
Christliness in thought and action is practical. Thus the promise (Ps. 91:1), "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty," is seen to be a present reality, or fact, in Christian Science.
