In spiritual reality, where the divine Principle is All and good, there is no opposition to the perfection of Principle. And there is no resistance to the statement, or demonstration, of that perfection. There is no opposition to man, the reflection of Principle—the child of God—and there is no resistance to the statement, or demonstration, of this real man's perfection.
But in the belief of life that is both spiritual and material, both good and evil, the material appears to oppose the spiritual, the evil appears to contradict the good. Unless we understand the spiritual and good to be the real, and the material and evil the unreal, we find ourselves living in and experiencing the belief rather than the reality.
Christ Jesus referred to this belief as "the world." He said, "In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." John 16:33. Later, John taught that Jesus' victory can be our victory as we believe in the Christ rather than in the opposition to the Christ, which John termed "that spirit of antichrist." John 4:3.Jesus' whole life was a statement, or demonstration, of spiritual reality in the language of the world's people. His title was rightly Christ, for he embodied the spiritual idea of perfection—an idea stated and demonstrated in terms appreciable by human belief, to which both imperfection and perfection seemed real. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of the Science of Christ, Christian Science, explains Christ as "the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error." Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 583.
