All individuals and countries will come to know Christ as God's power with them. This fact gives us the courage and spiritual credibility to share with and heal non-Christians through Christian Science. Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes: "Christ. The divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error." Science and Health, p. 583.
Historically, Mrs. Eddy found her first students among the people of the United States and then from other countries with a Christian tradition. Her vision of the reach of the promised Comforter, however, was worldwide. She writes, "From the interior of Africa to the utmost parts of the earth, the sick and the heavenly homesick or hungry hearts are calling on me for help, and I am helping them." The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 147.
Following our Leader's fruitful service to God and humanity awakens us to her explicit leaning on the example of our Master, Christ Jesus. He healed Samaritan, Roman, Canaanite, as well as his Jewish countrymen; yet he lived in an era when those countrymen shunned foreigners and referred to them disparagingly. He saw God's qualities glorified in the real, spiritual man. Because of Jesus' demonstration of man's sonship with God, we need not be inhibited in our vision of the scope of Christ-healing and its purpose, to "teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Matt. 28:19.
What is the way to share divine Science? Our approach is to help others with the power of God, as did Jesus. We heal. One case healed through the Christ Science speaks more eloquently of the Christ than any words can. Healing quickens human consciousness.
What place does conversion have? Conversion is not convincing another person to accept our own faith. Authentic conversion could be described as a change of consciousness from material belief to spiritual understanding. This regeneration is accomplished through healing sickness, removing sin, overcoming mortality.
Every uplifted thought and feeling on earth leads toward the Christ. Healing illuminates the Scriptures, because the individual's spiritual sense has been spoken to with love and authority and roused to understanding. For one healed or seeking healing through Christ, the Bible is no longer the message of another religion or country. It is seen as a record of and a guide to God's universal power, showing that in any century or country, men and women can be disciples of God's Christ.
What a mistake to conclude that segments of mankind are buried under so many layers of ancestry and tradition that they cannot be conscious of and experience Christian Science healing! The Christ itself should not be thought of as needing to leap cultural or racial boundaries, because it has never been confined by them. Christ is as universal as its Principle, divine Love. Far from making us insensitive to the special needs of others, this understanding of the direct authority of Christ releases us to work tenderly and wisely, without distrust or bombast. Man is God's. He is Soul's coeternal, coexistent idea.
I have friends who gave me the privilege of seeing them turn to Christian Science after they had grown up as nonChristians. Learning how to pray, they found greater spiritual sense. Healings, genuine joy, and a deeper sense of direction came. They learned to love the Bible, which had seemed difficult to understand before.
The false assumption that some are unreachable is a lie about God and man. God knows the truth of each of His children, while the material senses can know nothing of them! When we turn totally to what God knows, material sense, which includes all beliefs of sickness and depravity, is corrected, and our real humanhood is revealed. Then men, women, and children worship the one God in devotion and demonstration. This is Christ's evangelization.
There is wonderful promise in a willingness to recognize all as God's spiritual offspring, equally loved and approved by Him. There is, however, much work to do. In the same way that buying land is only the first step in farming it, so our admiration for the real, spiritual man in divine Science must develop into healing works that manifest this man here.
We recognize God and His idea through spiritual sense. This recognition redeems our vision of our brother man and brings to Christian Science those asking to be healed. We pray honestly, not ignoring pantheism, idolatry, anthropomorphism, mysticism, xenophobia. We handle them scientifically through an understanding of Love, because they claim to bind mankind to illness, sin, death. Our purpose is to bless, to glorify God, whose everlasting covenant of blessing is recorded in the Bible. The Psalmist pictures God as saying to the children of Israel, "Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance," and goes on to describe those to whom this promise was given: "when they were but a few men in number; yea, very few, and strangers in it." Ps. 105:11, 12. We heal because God loves man; and all mankind, including those strange to us, deserve to know this love.
Protecting the healing work demands that we persist in continually gaining a clearer sense of evil's essential unreality. We learn to recognize error's claim of power to be baseless. This work is fundamental in sharing Christian Science with non-Christians. Why? Because animal magnetism—the lie that mind is in matter—when feared and accepted, is the fountainhead of dogmatism, self-righteousness, racial mistrust, and mental ingrowth. These negative traits would freeze our willingness to help others and obscure our God-given authority to penetrate patterns of culture to heal and comfort those who are not Christians.
The Mother Church is equipped and organized to help bring all individuals from material belief to spiritual understanding. This Church brings to light man's unity with Love. To see and ponder this linkage with divine Principle increases our ability to heal and share with the non-Christian. Scientific Christianity is destined to unfold the infinite idea of infinite Mind. As we perceive this spiritual idea to be unlimited and adequate in practical application, we gain the courage and the Christian character to demonstrate it. Our spiritualization of thought will attract the non-Christian seekers. And they will know that they have found, not a sect, but "power to become the sons of God." John 1:12.
