"Where were you when it happened?" asks the prosecutor in a court of law; and the establishment of a genuine alibi may set the defendant free. Then how shall the Christian Scientist answer when his freedom is threatened by the sequences of accident or disease? Where was I? In a matter body, a train, automobile, plane, or elsewhere in matter? Such an admission is a great liability. It is the beginning of the mesmerism that may hold one in bondage for days, months, possibly years. It can lead one to admit not only existence and experience apart from God but the chain effects of man-made laws.
On the other hand, consciousness of one's spiritual preexistence in Mind is an irrefutable fact, a freedom defender. Christ Jesus' steadfast affirmation reads, "Before Abraham was, I am."John 8:58; Christian Science demonstrates this consciousness of man's spiritual preexistence. It repudiates the illusion of existence in matter and sets the captive of personal and material sense absolutely free. Consciousness of spiritual selfhood gives us immunity from becoming servants of sin, sickness, accident, death. To the degree that we understand our Christly selfhood and live it daily, we have the correct answer to "Where was I?"
Spiritual preexistence was the secret of the Master's healings, resurrection, and ascension. He was mindful of it in his prayer, "And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was."17:5; Truly following him requires us at all times and under all circumstances to determine whether we are thinking about material personalities, willful human plans and conditions, matter body, personal achievements, mortal history, or about spiritual ideas. The former is animal magnetism, the mesmeric delusion of mortal mind; the latter is Christianly scientific activity that leads to freedom, happiness, success.
