The Swiss Alps were right outside my bedroom window. These glorious mountains surrounded our small hotel. Brightened by moonlight, the immense, solid shape that filled my window view seemed close enough to touch. Much later in the night I wakened and looked out. The mountain had vanished. The massive form was completely blotted out.
There is nothing unusual about fog, but its impact on my senses that night was startling. There were the trees and the familiar bench in the front yard, but the mountain was not there at all. Where had it gone? What phenomenal feat was demanded to restore its glory, its structure, and its beauty? How long would this take?
The questions are irrelevant, aren't they? The mountain was right there. But these are the questions we sometimes ask when the physical senses obscure the harmony that belongs naturally in our lives—when disease has convinced us that our health is missing, or the checkbook says our business is failing, or some form of depression is apparently eating away our joy. Then the question arises: How to restore the lost harmony?
As we study and apply the truths of Christian Science, the analogy between the mist hiding the mountain and error hiding harmony becomes clear. Christian Science declares that God, Mind, is the one cause, or Principle, of the universe. The divine Mind has made no mistakes that need correcting. God's expression of His own infinitude is perfect and allows no room for catastrophe, accident, disease, loss, imperfection of any nature.
The illusion that matter has life, that matter is a cause or an effect, is the mist that hides the mountain. Only the material senses state that a bone has been broken or that disease is present or that supply and demand are out of balance. The study of Christian Science reveals the workable truth that our help does not come from trying to bring back a lost state of harmony but from dissolving or seeing through the lie of the material senses that would obscure the presence of harmony.
Jesus was confronted with similar delusions—for example, a withered hand, a businessman entangled in sharp dealing, a lifelong invalid. But the time required for what we would call restoration, or healing, was only a moment for Jesus. His conviction of the present actuality of divine perfection was just as natural and effortless for him as my conviction that the mountain was still in its place, in spite of the mist. Restoration of matter was not the demand, but a clear knowing and discernment of the true fact that nothing had changed.
When Jesus faced the man with the withered hand, we can be sure his thought was not misty with speculations, such as, How long had matter been wasting away? What devastating disease could have done this? Was it possible to restore, little by little, a whole hand? Instead, he must have been able to see in an instant, with the omnipotent penetration of Truth, man's God-supported dominion and his purity, which the scorn of Pharisaism could not touch. This recognition of the presence of man's perfection immediately dissolved the mist of false belief.
Jesus said, "Stretch forth thy hand," Luke 6:10; and the man did. No time was required to restore flesh, because Jesus was not working with flesh. He was working only with spiritual concepts—ideas—which Mind, God, sends forth. In discussing this remarkable healing in her book Unity of Good, Mrs. Eddy states, "Jesus required neither cycles of time nor thought in order to mature fitness for perfection and its possibilities." Un., p. 11; Jesus' unwavering conviction that only perfection, not imperfection, is present must have been the basis of his reasoning and of the inevitable healing. This scientific reasoning was ever tender, compassionate, and loving, because he was loving the spiritual man that God made.
Since present perfection was Christ Jesus' starting point, it must be ours, too, if we would heal. Are there a flat earth and a round earth occupying the same space? No, there are not. The round earth is always present, in spite of the illusion of a flat one. The round earth appears, not through some act of creation, but because we are willing to let go of a false concept. Restoration is both an appearing and a disappearing. Mrs. Eddy reminds us, "When false human beliefs learn even a little of their own falsity, they begin to disappear." Science and Health, p. 252; Spirit expresses itself as spiritual substance, not matter, and spiritual substance is always present; it can never be either lost or restored because it is maintained and sustained as the actual evidence of Spirit.
When material sense would tell us that a bone has been broken or disease is present, divine logic assures us that the spiritual reality—God's creation—is actually present, as it has always been; it has never left.
Christian Science, in line with the teaching and healing of Jesus, has not come to tell us that the bone will knit and the sick matter will get well. What, then, is its sublime promise? That all is well. This is not closing the eyes and ignoring what appears to be a physical, moral, or mental defect. Discerning with spiritual insight the divine nowness and presence of spiritual completeness makes possible this mental stand for present perfection.
The Bible tells how the prophet Elisha was surrounded by the Syrian army and his servant was frantic with fear and despair. Elisha prayed, "Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see." II Kings 6:17; Elisha was already sure of God's all-embracing love and of his own safety and security. In the same way we must let the consciousness of divine actuality so fill our thought that we see the universe alive with the forces of good, even the very space that seems filled with evil's clamor.
Does Mind create a man or universe capable of lapsing into imperfection, which God Himself must restore? No, the Science of creation states that God's expression of Himself neither vacillates nor fluctuates. God is Principle, and Principle's unerring law holds cause and effect permanently at one and harmonious. To see that God is infinite and indivisible reveals nothing in the whole of creation that is less than perfect.
The effects of Christian Science healing appear as physical restoration and bettered conditions. If we do not pray for restoration of matter, why then does restoration appear when we pray? For the same basic reason that the mountain was outside my window the next morning. In Science the true facts of being are always present; we do not pray for their return but only that we be undeceived by the mist of life in matter.
When the physical senses barrage us with their imperfections, it is tempting to wish, or even pray, that unhealthy matter return to its former healthy state. But even healthy matter is not what God has created, and to wish for it is to wish for limitation and falsity. Feel the vigor of Mrs. Eddy's words when she writes: "Now let us not lose this Science of man, but gain it clearly; then we shall see that man cannot be separated from his perfect Principle, God, inasmuch as an idea cannot be torn apart from its fundamental basis. This scientific knowledge affords self-evident proof of immortality; proof, also, that the Principle of man cannot produce a less perfect man than it produced in the beginning. A material sense of existence is not the scientific fact of being; whereas, the spiritual sense of God and His universe is the immortal and true sense of being." Miscellaneous Writings, p. 186.
To affirm with the certainty of scientific knowing that man's real and actual spiritual condition is unchanged, intact, and present is the basis of the prayer of restoration. To live the energizing, God-derived qualities, such as selfless love, tenderness, humility, morality, is to claim them as expressing in a measure our identity and the substance of our present being. Prayer is not hoping to restore bad matter into good matter but a deep, joyous, inner conviction of the allness of God; a replacing of false concepts of materiality with the sound substance of Spirit, which is never absent and never imperfect.
Be glad, always, that your mountain is right there. Its beauty and permanence have never been altered by the mist.
