Mankind's desire for regeneration and salvation is met with assurance in these words: "The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the Lord." Prov. 16:1 Christian Science reveals that God, Mind, is the infinite source of right ideas, the divine intelligence directing the expression of those ideas, and the supreme power making the ideas potent, effective, and safe. Through heavenly inspiration God prepares and God directs, and the effect of inspiration is to turn human consciousness from materiality to spirituality, to the discernment of the perfection, completeness, and reality of the spiritual universe.
The preparation of the heart is an experience to be earnestly and constantly sought in a spirit of humility and obedience. The Bible and Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy mark out the way, counseling, correcting, and comforting. Consistent evangelization of the human consciousness can be realized through the study of these books and through the heartfelt prayer they direct.
After giving cogent instructions regarding prayer in her Message to The Mother Church' in 1896, Mrs. Eddy refers to the heart that is reaching out prayerfully to the Father-Mother God and says: "If this heart, humble and trustful, faithfully asks divine Love to feed it with the bread of heaven, health, holiness, it will be conformed to a fitness to receive the answer to its desire; then will flow into it the 'river of His pleasure,' the tributary of divine Love, and great growth in Christian Science will follow,—even that joy which finds one's own in another's good." Miscellaneous Writings, p. 127
Being "conformed to a fitness to receive the answer" is basic to spiritual progress and therefore to healing. It is a task of human regeneration, of moral reformation, of strengthened hope and enlightened faith, and it must be undertaken in obedience to divine direction and in compliance with divine law. It involves the surrender of the false concept of an afflictable mortal creation to the spiritual fact that in the scientific unity of God and man perfection is the only fact. In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy writes, "Inspired thought relinquishes a material, sensual, and mortal theory of the universe, and adopts the spiritual and immortal." Science and Health, p. 547
This is the revelation of Christian Science—that man as God's spiritual likeness expresses fully the goodness of his creator and is therefore always at the standpoint of perfection and fulfillment. It is not the man of this true creation that needs preparation, development, or cultivation, but the human consciousness which has been deceived by the lie of an opposite creation. Spiritual inspiration is as natural to the real man in his manifestation of the Life that is God as breathing is to the material sense of life.
Recently I watched a television program on which an occupational therapist was interviewed. He described the program offered for rehabilitation of mental patients and then added, "But we never know what it is that makes them want to take part in these programs and to be healed." Christian Science answers that the motivation for good is always from God; that real consciousness, which is always present, deep within every individual, responds to the supreme Mind, God. The inspiration or motivation for regeneration then appears.
Spiritual inspiration is not bestowed on one and withheld from another. Being divine in origin, it is completely unrestricted. The imperative command of the Father-Mother God is ever speaking to individual consciousness, bidding it rise out of material bondage into the glorious freedom of true identity. It is upon this spiritual fact that Christian Scientists base their prayers and their assurance that all the resistance error can offer, however invincible it seems, must fade before the light of the Christ, Truth.
It sometimes seems that trials and suffering prepare the way for the receptivity to holiness, but the statement in Proverbs is that the preparation is divine. Spiritual truth appears to human consciousness through divine inspiration and illumination and not because of affliction or time. Divine inspiration is always present, never silent, never absent, though when material bondage is most burdensome this inspiration may be more willingly heeded.
Mrs. Eddy experienced vicissitudes in her life prior to the revelation of Christian Science. Yet she writes, "God had been graciously preparing me during many years for the reception of this final revelation of the absolute divine Principle of scientific mental healing." p. 107
Do we see in our experience a preparation of the heart, or do we see only vicissitudes and difficulties? Do we recognize spiritual inspiration and through it adopt spiritual reality in place of afflictive mortality? Do we willingly yield up the griefs of material history and rejoice in the harmonies of Soul, which at this very moment is offering evidence of spiritual existence?
According to the Scriptural record, there was a preparation of the heart, a response to heavenly inspiration, in many of those whom Jesus healed. There are indications that the human had yielded up something, that the Christ had touched the thought of the individual in some way even before the Master's work of healing.
At the pool of Bethesda, Jesus found a man who could answer in the affirmative his question, "Wilt thou be made whole?" John 5:6 The length of his invalidism had not made this man content with or resigned to invalidism. His thought had responded to the divine impulse sufficiently to reach out for healing.
A woman who had been wrestling unsuccessfully with illness for some time said suddenly to the Christian Science practitioner whom she had asked for help. "Do you suppose that I really don't want to be healed?" The question was evidence that she was experiencing a preparation of the heart for healing, for she had been inspired to face up squarely to the mesmerism that would say that disability may bring desired attention, that invalidism may provide escape from an unhappy situation or unwelcome responsibility, that the will to recover could be lost. And she was healed.
God's will that His child should reflect Him is never lost, and the teachings of Christian Science assure us that human will does not supersede God's will. Nor can we be so mesmerized by invalidism that we do not want to witness for God and to be receptive to heavenly inspiration.
Perusal of the accounts of other healings wrought by Jesus reveals that in some cases the afflicted ones who were benefited had been inspired to overcome opposition or obstruction, to disbelieve health laws, to abandon former reliances, to acknowledge the Christly power, and to manifest patience, humility, consecration. Thus were their hearts prepared for the wondrous healing activity of the Christ, Truth, which is equally effective and available today for us.
Well may we all pray for a more obedient response to the divine demand that is inherent in spiritual consciousness. The inattention and reluctance of mortal mind can offer no true resistance to the activity of Spirit, ever available to human consciousness. When we realize that God has prepared us to meet our challenges, we shall not accept defeat but rise in inspiration to prove that life is spiritual and therefore strong, healthy, pure, and indestructible.
