The earnest study and practice of Christian Science unfolds Soul-sense instead of material sense. The student begins to glimpse something of his real existence in and of God, the one infinite Soul, or Mind. This awakening to spiritual reality gradually expands into a subjective state of joy, satisfaction, and completeness never known before. He finds a deep serenity and tranquillity in the quiet beholding of Love's all-inclusiveness and tender care.
But as he advances in his practical application of this Science, he finds that this happy sense of unity with God, important and essential as it is, does not always solve the various problems that present themselves in his march from sense to Soul. This awakens him to the need of understanding and of specifically handling the claims of the supposititious opposite of God, or good, named in Christian Science, animal magnetism. Study and experience teach him that so long as he appears to be a mortal, eating, drinking, sleeping, and being clothed materially, he had better not, for his own good and the good of others, ignore what the senses are claiming to be true.
Ignoring error does not destroy it. Facing it, or handling it with scientific precision, does. Our textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, leaves us in no doubt about this point. We read on page 252, "A knowledge of error and of its operations must precede that understanding of Truth which destroys error, until the entire mortal, material error finally disappears, and the eternal verity, man created by and of Spirit, is understood and recognized as the true likeness of his Maker."
