One hears much these days about the necessity for proper rest, diet, and exercise. Although keeping a suitable balance in these things is sensible, Christian Scientists find that to devote too much interest to a material regimen does not remedy physical problems or offer any lasting satisfaction.
According to Christian Science, to depend on matter for strength, satisfaction, pleasure, vitality, beauty, and comeliness is to give matter power—to disobey the First Commandment by worshiping false gods. In Science, one learns that God, Spirit, is the only substance, Life, Truth, and Mind and that there is no other power or existence, because God is infinite, the All-in-all. As the Scriptures say, "In him we live, and move, and have our being." Acts 17:28 Because life, substance, and intelligence are in and of God, to think of them as properties of matter is to deny the very nature of the one Supreme Being, His absolute allness, purity, and perfection, to disavow God as the only Life and to deny Spirit as infinite.
Christian Science shows that matter, being the very opposite of Spirit, is no more than an erroneous suggestion. As Mrs. Eddy states, "Matter is made up of supposititious mortal mind-force." Science and Health, p. 310 This fraudulent mortal mind was aptly described by Jesus when he said: "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it." John 8:44 Thus the suggestion and the suggester are nothing but lies, which are cast out by the Christlike understanding of Truth.
This line of thought was forcibly brought to the attention of a young student of Christian Science when she seemed to be overwhelmed by an inordinate amount of physical activity. To combat an increasing sense of fatigue, she tried to be more mindful of the food she ate and of the amount of sleep and exercise she had, all the while trying to maintain a physical appearance required for her line of work.
However, these seemingly sensible precautions, instead of freeing her and enabling her to do more, so riveted her thought to the demands of her body that she became extremely self-conscious of her appearance, highly sensitive to aches and pains, and more desirous of food and sleep.
As it became increasingly difficult for her to get through a day's work, she began to see how faulty and superficial her reasoning had been. It was not so much that her attempts toward balancing her daily physical needs were wrong as that she had never really handled the basic problem. Inadvertently, she had let herself become mesmerized by what is erroneously termed "common sense"—the suggestion that there is life, substance, and intelligence in matter —into believing that she depended on matter for health, beauty, and satisfaction.
In an article entitled "Deification of Personality" in "Miscellaneous Writings,"' Mrs. Eddy says, "I earnestly advise all Christian Scientists to remove from their observation or study the personal sense of any one, and not to dwell in thought upon their own or others' corporeality, either as good or evil." And farther on she adds: "I warn students against falling into the error of anti-Christ. The consciousness of corporeality, and whatever is connected therewith, must be outgrown. Corporeal falsities include all obstacles to health, holiness, and heaven. Man's individual life is infinitely above a bodily form of existence, and the human concept antagonizes the divine." Mis., pp. 308, 309
The task, then, is to separate one's identity from matter and claim one's complete independence from it as a spiritual idea, as the pure expression of God's being.
Consider the qualities we often struggle to achieve physically, such as vitality, grace, beauty, health, and freedom. These are really spiritual qualities; and since they are so, they are already inherent in each one of us as the spiritual image and likeness of God. But we can never satisfactorily demonstrate these qualities until we free ourselves from the bondage of believing in a material identity. Thus we need a sufficient amount of daily spiritual exercise to keep thought lifted to the realm of the real and flexible enough to turn easily to the truth.
Just as a ballerina must practice at an exercise bar in order to maintain grace and ease for performance or a golfer must practice his chip shots or putting in order to maintain a low score, so the Scientist must constantly exercise his spiritual faculties, his ability to see abundant good and perfect beauty unfolding in his daily life, in order to maintain his dominion over carnal suggestions.
Too often, when he hasn't done sufficient prayerful work, one is startled by the seemingly overwhelming assignment of resistance to error, and he feels that mental preparations comparable to a grandiose military buildup are necessary. When, instead, he has done his daily exercise—his daily declaration and understanding affirmation of the allness of good—he need only deny error's claim calmly and trustingly.
As she studied along these lines, the student found herself rising earlier in the day in order to do prayerful metaphysical work; and she did this without any sense of fatigue, even though her employment kept her working late at night. At about the same time, her daily activities increased so that she was physically working much harder and longer and had less time to devote to the thought of nutriment. Yet, because she was beginning to see clearly what her true individuality is, she felt no strain but, instead, the greatest enthusiasm for her work, boundless freedom, strength, and ability, as well as a new consciousness of the beauty of her true selfhood, the beauty of being the perfect, graceful expression of God.
One need not be mesmerized by food, sleep, or exercise, either to fear their effects or to find satisfaction in them. Matter or mortal mind neither creates nor destroys. All that is real is of God and therefore is spiritual. And this Christ, Truth, is the only true animating force in our lives.
One discovers that the seemingly good "commonsensical" interest promoted through so many channels of communication can become a mesmeric attempt by impersonal evil to keep thought chained to the belief that man dwells in matter and is controlled by it through the sensations of pleasure and pain. The Christian Scientist, while not ignoring his daily physical needs, must be alert to the delusive machinations of the carnal mind and be certain each day that God is first and foremost in his affections and allegiance.
To do this requires honest acknowledgment of and quiet, humble gratitude for God's infinite and all-encompassing perfection and the perfection of His creation.
"O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! . . . When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? . . . Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet."ps. 8:1-6
