Spiritual understanding should be fundamental in all measurements, and, indeed, it gives the only light that enables us to see the real where, according to Christian Science, an illusion, or unreality, is claiming presence. In the definition of "day" in the Glossary of Science and Health Mrs Eddy says: "The objects of time and sense disappear in the illumination of spiritual understanding, and Mind measures time according to the good that is unfolded. This unfolding is God's day, and 'there shall be no night there.'"Science and Health, p. 584; To use this definition as a standard against which to measure the so-called effects of time is to see the practical availability of God's healing presence in every phase of our experience.
This standard became evident to a student of Christian Science who, after an industrial accident on a Friday afternoon, found himself in a hospital and heard a voice saying, "If he should recover, he will never look the same again." Insisting that he be allowed to go home, the student was told that, in addition to a severely lacerated cheek, X rays showed a crack in his skull bone and a completely shattered nose. Several hours later, upon his insisting, and waiving the hospital's responsibility and promising to return for observation in three days' time, he was allowed to leave, his head and face swathed in bandages.
A Christian Science practitioner was asked to help with prayerful metaphysical treatment. He passed word to the student to hold fast to the fact of the ever-presence of divine Principle, Love, and the correlative fact that in this ever-presence there could not be any mortal sense of a time when Love's presence could be invaded by error in the guise of accident or injury. Because "Mind measures time according to the good that is unfolded," there could be no time for lack of good to make itself felt; and Love's idea, man, could not suffer any penalty or aftereffects from a mortal mind concept of time attempting to operate in direct opposition to God's law of eternal perfection. The practitioner then referred to Mrs. Eddy's statement: "Accidents are unknown to God, or immortal Mind, and we must leave the mortal basis of belief and unite with the one Mind, in order to change the notion of chance to the proper sense of God's unerring direction and thus bring out harmony.
